BR  121  . L4  8 

Lewis,  Charles  Smith,  1868 
Some  foundation  truths  of 
the  Christian  faith 


Some  Foundation  Truths 

of  the 

1  i  A  M  1  ‘'1 

y  Mi'll  _ 

Christian  Faith 

BY  / 

* 

y  «  L 

CHARLES  SMITH  LEWIS,  B.D. 


Canon  of  Religious  Education  in  the  Diocese 
of  New  Jersey 


# 


PHILADELPHIA 

GEORGE  W.  JACOBS  &  CO. 

PUBLISHERS 


Copyright,  1923,  by 

GEORGE  W.  JACOBS  &  COMPANY 

All  Bights  Reserved 

PRINTED  IN  IT.  S.  A. 


VAIL- BALLOU  COMPANY 
BINGHAMTON  AND  NEW  YORK 


To 

E.  L.  D.  L. 


Whose  help  and  inspiration 
have  been  a  constant  en¬ 
couragement  and  incentive. 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2019  with  funding  from 
Princeton  Theological  Seminary  Library 


https://archive.org/details/somefoundationtrOOIewi 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.  The  Christian  Idea  of  God  .  .  .  .  1 

II.  The  Christ  of  the  Hew  Testament  .  .  27 

III.  The  Creeds . .  .  53 

IV.  The  Idea  of  the  Church . 77 

V.  The  Sacramental  .System . 100 


VI.  The  Principles  of  Christian  Duty  .  .  122 


Some  Foundation  Truths 
of  the  Christian  Faith 


CHAPTER  I 

THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEA  OF  GOD 

Man,  who  has  been  described  as  incurably  re¬ 
ligious,  has  always  sought  an  answer  to  the  age- 
old  question ;  What  is  God.  He  has  looked  into 
the  heart  of  nature  and  tried  to  find  out  what 
lies  beneath  and  behind  the  world.  He  has  pen¬ 
etrated  ever  more  and  more  deeply  the  mysteries 
of  life  and  being,  seeking  to  discover  the  ulti¬ 
mate  truth.  He  has  let  his  imagination  have 
rein,  and  pictured  for  himself  divine  beings,  vis¬ 
ible  and  invisible.  He  has  listened  to  the  still 
small  voice  within  him,  and  given  play  to  the 
religious  instinct  with  which  he  was  born,  and 
he  has  felt  and  seen  and  known  God.  Or  he  has 
yielded  himself  to  the  unfolding  of  truths  by 
which  men  have  known  God  better  from  age  to 
age  as  He  spake  by  the  prophets  and  last  of  all 
by  His  Son.  He  has  seen  God,  and  worshipped 
Him,  offering  sacrifices;  and  by  prayers  and 
praises  shown  his  dependence  upon  Him.  In  all 


2 


SOME  FOUNDATION  TRUTHS 


these  and  countless  other  ways  man  has  sought 
to  know  God. 

And  the  answers  have  given  him  philosophy 
and  theology  and  the  outward  expression  of  re¬ 
ligion.  But  we  need  to  remember  that  these  are 
not  the  same ;  that  Philosophy  “seeks  to  discover 
and  exhibit  the  ultimate  truths  of  being  and  life 
without  recourse  to  supernatural  revelation” ; 
that  Theology  “treats  of  God  and  of  whatsoever 
in  any  manner  pertains  to  Him,  in  so  far  as  it 
does  pertain  to  Him”;  and  that  Religion  is  the 
natural  response  of  the  soul  of  man  as  he  recog¬ 
nises  God.  Aubrey  More  suggests  the  distinc¬ 
tion  between  theology  and  religion  in  his  essay 
in  Lux  Mundi.  Man  sees  God  and  worships; 
This  is  religion:  Man  thinks  about  God  and 
reasons  concerning  His  revelation  of  Himself; 
This  is  theology:  Man  tries  to  solve  the  riddle 
of  the  Universe  by  the  power  of  his  own  intel¬ 
lect  and  to  bring  into  a  systematic  whole  all 
that  he  has  found  in  the  solution;  and  This  is 
philosophy. 

We  need  to  remember  the  distinction,  and  to 
be  certain,  further,  that  a  man  who  seeks  to  dis¬ 
cover  the  ultimate  truths  of  life  and  being,  nay 
also,  the  man  who  reasons  about  God  and  the 
things  that  concern  Him,  may  be  both  earnest 
and  honest  and  yet  utterly  without  real  religion. 
We  all  know  people  who  are  religious,  i.  e.  see 
God  and  worship  Him,  and  seek  to  live  as  He 
has  taught  them,  and  yet  never  think  or  philoso¬ 
phize,  who  are  utterly  uninterested  in  the  reason 


OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH 


3 


for  things,  or  the  relationships  between  the 
parts  of  God’s  truth.  They  make  no  pretense  at 
either  theology  or  philosophy.  But  such  peo¬ 
ple  are  exceptional.  Most  men  and  women 
want  to  know  what  they  believe  and  why;  and 
with  most  of  us  our  belief  shows  itself  in  ,our 
life. 

Our  problem  is  (1)  to  outline  the  fundamen¬ 
tal  factors  in  the  Christian  idea  of  God;  (2)  to 
examine  two  or  three  of  the  questions  which 
philosophy  raises  about  these;  and  (3)  to  see 
very  briefly  what  is  the  religious  value  of  the 
Christian  truth  about  God. 

i 

The  Christian  idea  of  God  is  stated  for  us  very 
definitely  in  our  Prayer  Book.  We  shall  find 
there  certain  great  fundamental  truths  formally 
put,  upon  which  our  whole  conception  is  built. 
As  children  we  learned  the  Apostles’  Creed,  and 
then  we  found  that  in  it  we  had  learned  “to  be¬ 
lieve  in  God  the  Father,  who  hath  made  me  and 
all  the  world;  Secondly  in  God  the  Son,  who 
hath  redeemed  me  and  all  mankind ;  and  thirdly 
in  God  the  Holy  Ghost  who  sanctifieth  me  and 
all  the  people  of  God.”  Our  formal  statements 
carry  us  much  further  for  we  also  learned  very 
shortly,  as  we  became  familiar  with  the  Nicene 
Creed,  that  we  believed  in  One  God,  and  yet  we 
immediately  went  on  to  speak  of  the  Father  and 
of  the  Son  and  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  three  divine 


4  SOME  FOUNDATION  TRUTHS 

Persons  in  that  same  One  God.  The  First  Arti¬ 
cle  of  Religion  gives  us  a  more  formal  defini¬ 
tion  of  God  than  the  Creed  does,  for  the  Article 
is  put  into  more  distinctly  theological  language. 
It  reads :  “There  is  but  one  living  and  true  God, 
everlasting,  without  body,  parts,  or  passions ;  of 
infinite  power,  wisdom,  and  goodness ;  the  Maker, 
and  Preserver  of  all  things  both  visible  and  in¬ 
visible.  And  in  unity  of  this  Godhead  there  be 
three  Persons,  of  one  substance,  power,  and 
eternity,  the  Father,  the  Son,  and  the  Holy 
Ghost.” 

The  old  saying  “our  prayers  show  our  beliefs” 
(lex  orandi,  lex  credendi)  points  to  another  evi¬ 
dence  of  the  formal  statements  of  the  Christian 
Idea  of  God.  No  one  can  fail  to  find  in  the 
Prayer  Book  the  certain  belief  that  there  is  a 
Divine  Being,  Almighty,  Everlasting,  of  infinite 
power  and  holiness,  Who  is  the  object  of  our  de¬ 
votions,  and  that  we  know  Him  by  the  Triune 
Name  of  the  Gospel :  “The  Father  and  the  Son 
and  the  Holy  Ghost,”  Who  is  addressed  in  the 
Litany  as  “Holy  Blessed  and  Glorious  Trinity, 
Three  Persons  and  One  God.”  And  further  the 
Prayer  Book  shows  from  beginning  to  end  that 
God  Whom  we  worship  is  spirit,  not  matter,  and 
that  our  knowledge  of  Him  comes  to  us 
originally  by  His  own  unfolding  of  Himself. 

The  Christian  conception  of  God,  however,  did 
not  originate  in  Christianity;  not  even  in  the 
teaching  of  its  Founder.  Behind  Christianity 
lie  the  centuries  of  Judaism,  and  the  Gospel 


OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH 


5 


revelation,  the  teachings  of  Jesus  Christ,  are 
built  quite  frankly  upon  that  which  had  come 
to  men  in  the  Law  and  the  Prophets.  St.  Augus¬ 
tine’s  celebrated  sentence;  “The  New  Testament 
lies  hid  in  the  Old,  the  Old  is  laid  open  in  the 
New,”  is  profoundly  true.  Our  Lord  Himself 
tells  us  that  He  did  not  come  to  “destroy  the  Law 
and  the  Prophets.”  Not  the  least  corner  of  them 
was  to  cease  until  it  had  completely  fulfilled  its 
purpose.  His  intention  was  to  bring  to  its  frui¬ 
tion,  to  perfect  and  complete,  to  unfold  and  to 
expand  those  great  truths  which  the  older  gen¬ 
erations  had  only  partly  known  and  still  less 
fully  grasped. 

The  peculiar  truth  which  the  Old  Testament 
enshrines  and  unfolds,  the  great  revelation  of 
the  Law  and  the  Prophets,  is  the  Idea  of  God. 
And  it  is  particularly  this  idea,  this  revelation, 
which  our  Lord  took  and  perfected.  But  to  un¬ 
derstand  His  teaching  one  must  never  forget 
the  beginnings  in  the  Old  Testament  teaching 
which  our  Lord  enriched.  As  St.  John  says  in 
the  preface  to  his  Gospel — and  none  of  the 
Apostles  has 7  put  the  truth  about  God  more 
simply  and  more  fully  than  he — “No  man  hath 
seen  God  at  any  time.  The  only  begotten  Son 
Who  is  in  the  bosom  of  the  Father  He  hath  de¬ 
clared  Him.”  And  the  word  which  St.  John 
uses  here  means  ‘to  bring  out  in  its  fulness.’ 

There  is  always,  today,  an  element  of  difficulty 
in  dealing  with  the  Old  Testament  record  of 
God’s  revelation,  because  scholars,  and  still  more 


6 


SOME  FOUNDATION  TRUTHS 


the  ordinary  Christians,  are  not  agreed  as  to 
the  yalue  of  that  record,  nor  the  dates  when  its 
several  parts  were  written  and  put  into  their 
present  form.  I  will  make  no  attempt  even  to 
touch  upon  this  controversy  more  than  to  say 
that  we  must  keep  clear  these  facts.  There  is  no 
question  that  the  revelation  of  which  the  Old 
Testament  is  the  record  was  gradually  given. 
God  unfolded  truths  as  men  were  able  to  under¬ 
stand  them  and  to  take  them  into  their  own  lives 
as  a  part  of  the  motives  which  governed  those 
lives.  The  task  of  Criticism  is,  in  part,  to  trace 
out  the  steps  by  which  God  led  Israel  along  the 
way  of  the  unfolding,  by  which  they  progressed 
as  they  received  the  revelation ;  and,  if  we  are  to 
understand  what  lies  behind  the  full  revelation 
given  by  our  Lord,  we  must  try  to  get  some  idea 
of  the  elements  which  entered  into  the  older  be¬ 
lief.  But  there  is  a  second  truth  quite  as  im¬ 
portant  as  this,  which  men  are  apt  to  forget. 
Even  under  advanced  views  of  development  and 
of  criticism,  it  is  quite  clear  that,  for  more  than 
a  century  before  the  Lord  began  to  teach,  the 
Old  Testament  record  was  accepted  as  the  true 
story  of  the  development  of  Israelis  life  and  faith, 
and  that  the  foundations  upon  which  our  Lord 
Jesus  Christ  and  His  Apostles  built  was  that 
Law  and  the  Prophets  in  its  present  form. 

We  want  to  find  first  what  are  the  most  out¬ 
standing  truths  of  the  Old  Testament  record  of 
those  earlier  revelations.  And  at  the  same  time 
we  must  remember  that  the  Apostle’s  words  are 


OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH  7 

true  beyond  all  question:  “God,  Who  in  times 
past  spoke  to  our  ancestors  by  the  prophets  in 
many  elements  and  in  many  ways,  has  in  these 
last  days  spoken  to  us  by  His  Son.”  The  Old 
Testament  revelation  cannot  be  understood  un¬ 
til  we  reach  the  completion  of  it  and  the  balanc¬ 
ing  of  it  in  the  New  Testament.  We  must  con¬ 
stantly  turn  from  Moses  and  Isaiah  and  all  that 
wonderful  galaxy  to  Him  Whom  they  foretold, 
and  seek  at  His  lips  the  fuller  truths  which  bind 
them  all  into  one. 

The  Jewish  Creed  was  very  short  and  very 
simple.  It  had  but  one  article;  “Hear,  O  Israel, 
the  Lord  thy  God  is  One  God.”  The  foundation 
truth  about  God  is  this :  There  is  but  One  God 
and  God  is  but  One.  We  are  so  familiar  with 
this  truth  that  we  often  fail  to  grasp  its  real 
significance  to  Israel.  The  people  of  Israel  were 
not  a  people  unique  and  peculiar,  alone  in  the 
great  world  of  men.  They  were  kinsmen  to 
numerous  other  nations  and  tribes;  and  though 
they  were  in  time  hedged  about  and  shielded  as 
the  Truth-bearers  of  God’s  revelation  they  were 
by  ancestry  and  in  association  Semites.  The 
Semitic  traditions,  the  racial  answers  to  the 
great  problems  of  the  Creation  and  the  like,  were 
their  inheritance.  They  came  into  Egypt,  and 
they  came  forth  from  it,  not  new  born,  full 
grown,  Minerva-like,  but  with  a  past  and  a  herit¬ 
age  of  belief  and  practise  in  which  they  con¬ 
stantly  showed  their  kindred  to  other  nations. 
But  in  spite  of  this  their  records  show  that  these 


8 


SOME  FOUNDATION  TRUTHS 


old  traditions  and  inherited  explanations  were 
purged  of  the  Semitic  polytheism  with  its  lower 
moral  tone,  and  when  they  were  put  into  writing 
they  were  shot  through  and  through  with  the  be¬ 
lief  that  the  God  of  Israel  was  the  One  True  God. 
We  can  get  glimpses  of  the  difficulty  with  which 
they  learned  this  truth,  not  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
but  as  a  living  belief.  The  scene  on  Mt.  Carmel 
tells  of  a  very  uncertain  acceptance  of  the  su¬ 
premacy  of  Jehovah.  Israel  by  no  means  be¬ 
lieved,  at  that  time,  in  but  one  God ;  even  though 
the  prophet  saw  the  truth  as  others  had  before 
him.  Hosea  emphasizes  the  reality  of  Jehovah 
as  the  only  saviour  and  throws  this  back  to  the 
days  of  the  deliverance.  Micah  speaks  of  Him 
as  the  Lord  of  the  whole  earth.  Isaiah  in  his 
vision  hears  the  angelic  chorus  sing  praises  to 
Him  whose  glory  fills  the  whole  earth.  In  later 
years  Isaiah — the  “unknown  prophet  of  the  Cap¬ 
tivity”  some  people  call  the  writer  of  these  chap¬ 
ters — declares  that  the  gods  of  the  heathen  are 
but  vanity,  while  it  is  the  Lord  who  made  the 
heavens.  The  glorious  supremacy  of  the  Lord 
over  the  whole  creation,  The  Lord  Who  faintetli 
not  nor  is  weary/  is  the  climax  of  that  wonder¬ 
ful  fortieth  chapter  with  which  the  second  part 
of  the  Book  of  Isaiah  begins.  By  whatever  steps, 
the  truth  was  grasped  long,  long  before  the  days 
of  our  Lord,  and  the  Jew  believed  that  Jehovah, 
the  God  of  Moses  and  the  Prophets,  the  God  of 
Abraham  and  Isaac  and  Jacob,  was  supreme, 
one,  and  the  only  God.  The  monotheism  of  the 


OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH 


9 


great  eighth  century  prophets  had,  through  the 
fiery  furnace  of  the  Captivity,  become  the  com¬ 
mon  belief  of  the  men  of  Israel.  And  this  funda¬ 
mental  truth  is  the  beginning  of  the  Christian 
Faith  as  it  finds  expression  in  the  Nicene  Creed: 
“I  believe  in  One  God.” 

The  Christian  revelation  does  not  stop  with 
the  first  article  of  its  belief.  When  Pliny  wrote 
to  the  Emperor  Trajan  in  the  year  112  A.  d.  that 
the  Christians  sang  hymns  to  Christ  as  to  God 
he  was  but  bearing  witness  to  the  outstanding 
truth  of  Christianity.  On  last  analysis  Chris¬ 
tianity  is  not  a  religion  of  a  certain  type  of  wor¬ 
ship,  of  a  special  code  of  morals,  nor  a  peculiar 
ideal  of  living;  and  these  alone.  Christianity  is 
a  profound  vital  belief  in  Jesus  Christ  as  God 
and  in  these  other  things  because  of  that.  I 
shall  not  stop  to  prove  this  now ;  it  will  come  up 
in  the  next  chapter.  But  the  Christian  idea  of 
God  goes  still  further.  Jesus  Christ  is  not  con¬ 
tent  with  asserting  His  own  Deity.  He  is 
equally  clear,  though  it  is  in  a  more  condensed 
statement,  that  the  Holy  Ghost  is  also  God.  He 
gives  no  argument;  He  states  the  fact.  And 
finally  after  His  Resurrection,  when  He  gives 
the  final  commission  to  the  Apostles  He  links 
together  the  Holy  Ghost  and  Himself  with  the 
Father  under  one  Name. 

How  can  this  be?  The  Christian  Church  has 
never  failed  to  make  this  the  central  truth  of 
the  religion  which  she  teaches.  The  story  of  her 
life,  is,  in  a  true  sense,  the  story  of  the  effort 


10  SOME  FOUNDATION  TRUTHS 


men  have  made  to  explain  this  truth  and  to  re¬ 
late  it  to  the  facts  of  the  universe  and  to  the  life 
of  men.  When  we  say  that  Jesus  Christ  is  God 
and  that  the  Holy  Ghost  is  God  and  that  They 
two  with  the  Father,  Who  is  God,  are  not  Three 
but  One,  what  do  we  mean?  Is  it  simply  that 
God  manifests  Himself  now  under  one  form  and 
later  under  another?  But  if  so  how  could  the 
Father  and  the  Son  both  exist  at  once?  Is  it 
simply  an  “economic  Trinity,”  i.  e.  that  the  three 
names  refer  to  three  forms  of  divine  activity, 
Creator  and  Redeemer  and  Sanctifier,  but  noth¬ 
ing  more  than  this  and  with  no  reference  to  an 
eternal  relationship?  Do  we  mean  that  Jehovah 
is  one  thing  in  Himself  and  another  as  men  speaE 
of  His  activity?  But  after  all  the  Christian 
Name  for  God  is  not  Jehovah,  except  in  a  very 
limited  sense.  The  true  Christian  Name  of  God 
is  that  which  our  Lord  Himself  gives  us ;  Father, 
Son  and  Holy  Ghost;  and  this  Name  tells  us 
of  the  essential  Character  of  God,  not  a  tempo¬ 
rary  revelation.  The  lesson  of  Moses  and  the 
Prophets  was  to  teach  men  that  God  is  One,  the 
Unity  of  the  Godhead;  Jesus  Christ  taught  in 
what  sense  He  is  One,1  and  that  the  unity  is  not 
solitariness  but  a  life  within  the  Unity  which  Ts 
expressed  under  the  Name  which  the  Son  Him¬ 
self  gave  us. 

i  Thus  whereas  the  Jews  were  only  taught  that  God  is  one 
numerically — that  there  is  no  other  God  but  He — He  has 
revealed  to  Christians  in  addition  to  this  what  the  nature  of 
His  unity  is — that  He  is  three  Persons  in  one  God.  Strong. 
The  Incarnation  of  God ,  p.  3 


OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH 


11 


Israel  not  only  learned  that  God  is  one.  They 
also  learned  that  He  is  personal.  He  is  no  far 
off  force,  not  an  abstraction  of  the  intellect  but 
a  living  Being,  with  all  the  elements  which  make, 
in  us,  what  we  call  Person.  He  possesses,  in  ex- 
tenso,  those  things  which  we  find  in  ourselves 
as  the  highest  type  of  life,  tie  has  power,  which 
finds  ways  to  express  Himself  as  He  will  and  as 
He  chooses.  He  is  conscious  of  His  own  Being 
and  His  own  characteristics,  so  that  He  can  re¬ 
veal  them  to  others  who  are  not  He.  And  as 
we  shall  see,  deep  within  His  mysterious  life, 
there  is  that  thing  which  we  call  love.  Bishop 
Gore  has  put  this  in  his  volume  “Belief  in  God” 
in  these  words :  “He  is  a  being  of  deliberate  will 
and  energetic  action,  approving  and  disapprov¬ 
ing,  loving  and  hating,  judging  and  blessing, 
who  not  only  can  respond  to  man’s  advances  and 
prayers,  but  who  from  the  beginning  has  been, 
and  always  is,  taking  the  initiative  in  willing 
and  acting;  whose  will  is  to  be  discerned  behind 
everything  that  happens,  yet  who  also  appears 
as  acting  more  intensely  here  than  there,  in  the 
execution  of  particular  individual  purpose.”  1 
It  is  here  that  the  New  Testament  revelation 
goes  further  along  the  line  of  God’s  unfolding  of 
the  truth  about  Himself.  The  God  on  Sinai  who 
revealed  Himself  to  Moses  under  the  name  Jeho¬ 
vah,  the  God  who  is,  the  Self-existent,  personal, 
God,  and  showed  in  the  vision  to  Isaiah  that  He 
is  the  God  of  the  whole  earth,  was  not  only 


iP.  113 


12  SOME  FOUNDATION  TRUTHS 


deeply  personal  in  the  innermost  recesses  of  His 
Being  but  in  the  unity  of  that  Godhead  there  was 
not  one  Person  but  three  Persons.  Jesus  Christ 
revealed  a  personal  Father,  side  by  side  with 
Himself  as  a  personal  Son,  who  derived  all  He 
had  from  that  Father,  and  yet  was  side  by  side 
with  Him,  as  St.  John  put  it,  from  before  time 
began ;  “God  of  God”  as  the  Greed  states  it,  Truly 
God  and  yet  deriving  His  Deity  from  the  Father 
who  is  with  Him  eternal.  So  in  like  manner  He 
showed  the  Holy  Spirit,  not  in  any  sense  as  a 
mere  divine  influence  and  power,  but  as  in  Him¬ 
self  distinctly  a  person  thinking  and  acting  and 
revealing  Himself  to  others.  The  problem  which 
this  statement  raises  is  the  great  problem  on 
the  speculative  and  philosophical  side  of  the 
Christian  religion.  Granted  that  there  is  a  God; 
how,  philosophically,  can  you  explain  the 
Trinity?  Yet  there  the  fact  stands  as  a  primary 
truth  of  the  Christian  idea  of  God. 

God  is  not  only  One  and  the  Only  God,  He  is 
not  merely  personal,  He  is  Holy.  The  Old  Tes¬ 
tament  revelation  makes  the  moral  character  of 
God  stand  out  very  clearly.  We  feel  the  neces¬ 
sity  for  this  belief,  for  we  cannot  think  of  a  God 
who  is  not  at  least  up  to  our  standards  of  morals. 
An  “imperfect”  God  would  be  no  God  to  us.  We 
could  never  be  content  with  a  God  who  is  less 
than  the  best  that  we  can  imagine.  It  is  in  this 
revelation  of  the  moral  character,  the  inner  life 
of  God,  that  the  New  Testament  outreaches  the 
Old.  I  cannot  stop  now  to  give  the  Old  Testa- 


OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH 


13 


ment  details  of  that  revelation.  Two  points 
must  suffice  and  these  are  most  familiar.  Micah 
gives  us  the  first  of  them  when  he  writes  “What 
doth  the  Lord  require  of  thee  but  to  do  justly 
and  to  love  mercy  and  to  walk  humbly  with  thy 
God?”  The  whole  of  the  Old  Testament  teach¬ 
ing  of  righteousness  is  built  up  on  the  idea  of 
fulfilling  what  is  required,  and  the  God  who  de¬ 
mands  this  of  men  shows  it  in  His  own  relation¬ 
ships  with  them.  He  is  a  covenant  God,  from 
the  beginning  of  the  days  of  Abraham.  This  is 
the  underlying  conception  of  the  religion  which 
is  based  on  the  revelation  to  Moses.  God  makes 
promises  which  they  can  be  sure  He  will  fulfil 
if  they  will  permit  it.  For  His  promises  are  not 
mere  soft  words  with  no  sense  of  right  in  them. 
They  are  promises  based  upon  the  fulfilment,  on 
Israel’s  part,  of  an  obligation  which  rests  on 
them.  Side  by  side  with  this  teaching  of  God  as 
righteous,  His  justice  we  call  it,  is  the  revelation 
of  His  holiness.  We  find  this  in  the  account  of 
the  vision  which  Moses  had  at  the  bush,  when 
God  bade  him  put  off  his  shoes  from  off  his  feet 
for  the  ground  on  which  he  stood  was  holy,  holy 
because  it  is  there  that  He  is  revealing  Himself. 
We  see  the  same  truth  in  Isaiah’s  experience 
when  he  cries  out,  after  seeing  God  in  all  His 
glory  in  the  midst  of  the  heavenly  courts;  “Woe 
is  me  for  I  am  undone,  because  I  am  a  man  of 
unclean  lips  and  dwell  in  the  midst  of  a  people 
of  unclean  lips,  for  mine  eyes  have  seen  the  King 
the  Lord  of  Hosts.”  But  most  of  all  we  get  this 


14  SOME  FOUNDATION  TRUTHS 


truth  about  God’s  holiness  in  the  worship  of 
Israel.  Whenever  it  may  have  come  in,  whether 
from  Mosaic  days  or  later,  there  is  no  doubt  that 
the  message  of  the  Day  of  the  Atonement  was 
well  understood  in  Christ’s  time,  and  the  mean¬ 
ing  of  that  day’s  worship  was  the  holiness  of 
God  and  the  sinfulness  of  man,  a  God  so  holy 
that  unless  cleansed  year  after  year  even  His 
chosen  people  could  not  come  to  worship  Him 
according  to  His  own  commandment. 

The  true  idea  of  the  inner  life  of  God  is,  how¬ 
ever,  not  found  in  the  Old  Testament.  We  must 
turn  to  the  New  Testament  and  find  it  in  the 
revelation  of  our  Lord.  No  where  is  the  truth 
of  St.  John’s  words  made  more  clear  than  here. 
No  aspect  of  God  is  “declared”  by  the  Son  as 
truly  as  this,  the  inner  life  of  God.  But  how 
does  He  do  it?  First  and  foremost  in  His  own 
life.  “What  Jesus  Christ  was  God  is  and  man 
must  be,  and  by  the  grace  of  God  can  be”  is  a 
sentence  we  should  never  forget.  If  we  would 
know  God  we  find  Him  best  revealed  in  Jesus 
Christ.  And  of  all  the  Evangelists  none  phrases 
it  more  clearly  than  St.  John,  though  St.  Luke  in 
the  parables  of  the  Lost  Sheep,  the  Lost  Coin 
and  the  Prodigal  Son  gives,  in  the  Master’s  own 
words,  as  clear  a  picture  as  St.  John  does. 
“God  so  loved  the  word  that  He  gave  His  only 
begotten  Son,”  that  is  the  phrase  we  find  in  St. 
John,  and  as  the  old  Apostle  thinks  back  across 
the  more  than  half  century  of  prayer  and  wor¬ 
ship  and  preaching  which  separated  him  from 


OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH  15 

the  earthly  life  of  the  Son  he  knew  as  perhaps 
none  other  knew  before  him  that  in  the  deepest, 
truest  sense,  if  one  would  know  God,  one  can¬ 
not  put  it  more  simply  nor  more  fully  than  in 
the  words  “God  is  love.” 

Modern  teachers  are  realizing  that  there  are 
realms  unreached,  untouched  by  the  microscope 
and  telescope,  that  there  are  great  “values,”  to 
use  the  term  of  philosophy,  whose  expression 
is  to  be  found  in  the  lives  of  men,  in  their  poetry 
and  art  and  religion.  Of  these  values  three  are 
often  spoken  of  as  being  the  highest;  the  good, 
the  beautiful  and  the  true.  We  are  being  again 
reminded  that  the  good  and  the  beautiful  and  the 
true  are  not  merely  the  sum-total  of  the  things 
which  men  see  and  know  and  do  and  describe  in 
these  terms,  but  that  in  some  sense  they  them¬ 
selves  are  the  evidence,  partial  and  incomplete 
yet  unimpeachable,  that  there  is  a  good  and  beau¬ 
tiful  and  true  beyond  and  above  the  sum  total 
of  which  what  we  see  are  so  to  say  its  rays.  But 
is  there  not  a  still  higher  value,  which  gathers 
into  itself,  not  as  a  whole  gathers  its  parts  but 
rather  as  the  source  and  center  of  them  all,  that 
long  line  of  deeds  of  mercy  and  sympathy  and 
kindliness  and  love  which  have  marked  human 
life  and  never  more  wonderfully  than  in  the  life 
of  Jesus  Christ?  Is  not  love  itself  a  great 
reality,  of  which  all  our  experiences  of  human 
love  are  but  shadows  or  glimmerings?  Is  it  not 
so  that,  realizing  this,  St.  John  says  not  that 
God  loves,  but  that  God  is  Love? 


16  SOME  FOUNDATION  TEUTHS 


If  this  is  true,  as  I  believe  it  is,  then  we  can 
go  a  bit  deeper  into  the  mystery  of  God’s  inner 
life  and  see  that  if  He  is  truly  Love  He  must  be 
Triune.  For  love  can  only  fully  and  perfectly 
exist,  real  love  I  mean,  between  persons.1  We 
cannot  think  of  it  save  as  a  feeling  between  two 
persons. 

I  have  not  exhausted  the  Old  Testament  revela¬ 
tion  of  God  but  I  have  gone  far  enough  to  give 
ns  a  clear  idea  of  what  is  made  known.  There 
is,  however,  a  special  development  in  the  idea 
of  God  which  is  given  in  the  New  Testament 
without  which  we  should  be  in  difficulty.  In 
the  Old  Testament  record,  there  is  no  sharp  un¬ 
derstanding  and  statement  of  God’s  relation  to 
the  material  universe,  save  as  its  Creator.  Has 
God  a  form?  Is  He  imaginable?  Is  He  pic: 
tnrable?  Is  He  material?  They  might  not  have 
put  it  in  these  words,  but  the  Jews,  the  best  of 
them,  wanted  to  see  God.  The  prophet  ventured 
to  ask  God  to  reveal  Himself  to  him  and  the  only 
revelation  which  God  would  give  him  was  the 
quiet  voice  as  of  the  evening  zephyr.  True  He 
showed  Himself  through  His  angels,  created  mes¬ 
sengers,  and  through  His  prophets,  men  in  whom 
His  Spirit  dwelt,  but  this  did  not  suffice.  Men 
wanted  to  see  God.  I  think  that  this  explains 
somewhat  the  intense  desire  for  idols  which 
marked  the  early  life  of  Israel,  and  it  was  only 
with  difficulty  that  God  made  them  understand 

i  Cf.  Illingworth,  Divine  Immanence,  pp.  186,  187. 


OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH 


17 


that  they  could  not  see  Him  nor  could  they  pic¬ 
ture  Him  in  the  form  of  anything  created  in 
heaven  above  nor  in  the  earth  beneath  nor  in  the 
waters  under  the  earth.  Then  our  Lord  came 
and  His  conversation  with  the  woman  of 
Samaria  taught  the  truth  which  we  accept  as  a 
commonplace  and  do  not  understand;  “God  is 
spirit.”  It  is  important  to  remember  that  what 
our  Lord  said  is  not  “God  is  a  spirit”  but  “God  is 
spirit.”  St.  John  again  puts  it  clearly  for  us 
when  he  says :  “No  man  hath  seen  God  at  any 
time.” 

The  problem  for  thinking  men  today  is  largely 
concerned  with  the  problem  of  spirit  and  matter 
and  the  relation  between  them.  We  must  not 
be  led  aside  by  that  now,  but  we  must  remem¬ 
ber  and  that  very  clearly,  that  God  is  ab¬ 
solutely  incorporeal.  He  has  nothing  like  a  ma¬ 
terial  body.  He  cannot  be  seen  by  physical  eyes. 
He  is  as  the  Article  puts  it  “without  body,  parts, 
or  passions.”  Neither,  therefore,  can  He  be 
thought  of  as  in  any  one  particular  place  for  He 
is  above  all  space  and  beyond  space  and  yet  He 
does  reveal  Himself  in  space  to  men  in  particu¬ 
lar  ways,  and  through  special  persons  and  finally 
in  and  through  His  Incarnate  Son. 

God,  supreme  over  all,  above  all,  is  also  in  all 
and  through  all.  The  question  of  the  relation 
between  God  and  the  created  universe,  I  do  not 
mean  as  the  Creator  of  it,  but  the  Universe  as 
created,  is  one  which  we  must  not  shrink  from 


18  SOME  FOUNDATION  TEUTHS 


considering.  The  truth  perhaps  is  suggested 
in  these  familiar  words  of  Tennyson: 

“  Little  flower — but  if  I  could  understand 
What  you  are,  root  and  all,  and  all  in  all, 

I  should  know  what  God  and  man  is.” 

for  within  the  flower  lies  not  merely  the  revela¬ 
tion  of  God’s  divine  creative  force,  but  the  pres¬ 
ence  of  God  Himself.  As  Fenelon  says :  “I  see 
God  in  everything.”  Both  writers  are  but  put¬ 
ting  in  different  words  the  truth  of  the  Apostle’s 
declaration  when  he  wrote  the  words  I  have 
just  quoted:  “Who  is  above  all  and  through  all 
and  in  you  all.”  The  Transcendence  and  the 
Immanence  of  God,  that  He  is  above  all,  i.  e.  in¬ 
dependent  of  the  whole  of  the  universe,  and  yet 
through  all,  i.  e.  absolutely  present  in  it,  has 
never  been  put  more  clearly  than  in  Abelard’s 
Ehythm  of  the  Trinity,  which  should  be  read  in 
the  original  Latin  to  appreciate  its  full  power. 

“ Above  all,  Under  all,  Outside  all,  and  Within  all; 

Within,  yet  not  shut  in;  Outside,  yet  not  shut  out; 

Under  all,  yet  not  withdrawn ;  Over  all,  yet  not  up¬ 
lifted  ; 

Thou  art  wholly  over  by  possessing  it;  under  by 
holding  it  up ; 

Outside  by  embracing  it ;  within  by  filling  it. 

Within,  yet  never  art  Thou  restrained;  without,  yet 
never  dissipated; 

Beneath,  yet  never  art  Thou  wearied ;  above  yet  none 
upholds  Thee.” 


OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH 


19 


ii 

Is  God  Knowable?  Can  mere  man,  with  his 
finite  mind,  really  know  God?  These  questions 
bring  us  at  once  not  only  to  a  matter  of  theology 
but  to  one  of  the  great  philosophical  problems. 
Is  the  answer  to  the  search  for  the  final  explana¬ 
tion  of  the  universe  and  of  life  the  answer  of  the 
atheistic  agnostic,  God  cannot  be  known,  we 
cannot  find  Him? 

We  need  at  the  very  outset  to  keep  clear  in  our 
minds  the  distinction  between  a  knowledge  that 
is  based  upon  mathematical  certainty  and  one 
that  is  based  upon  such  a  cumulative  body  of 
evidence  that  there  is,  in  the  phrase  of  the  law, 
“no  reasonable  ground  for  doubt.”  To  know 
God  as  we  know  the  exact  sciences,  with  mathe¬ 
matical  certainty,  beyond  any  possibility  of 
doubt,  is  quite  impossible.  This  fact  of  religion 
and  of  the  philosophy  which  underlies  religion 
has  always  been  recognized.  Nevertheless  there 
are  certain  so  called  proofs  of  God’s  existence 
whose  value  we  must  recognize.  They  vary  in 
the  impression  which  they  make  upon  us,  and 
in  the  force  with  which  they  appeal  to  our  rea¬ 
son.  No  one  of  them  in  and  of  itself  is  con¬ 
clusive.  The  world- wide  belief  in  God  which  no 
tribe  or  people  has  ever  lacked,  the  evidence  of 
design  and  purpose,  the  witness  of  the  moral 
sense,  to  name  but  a  few,  are  not  positive  proofs. 
But  this  is  true:  they  are  cumulative;  lines  of 
evidence  which  converge  upon  a  focus  they  can- 


20  SOME  FOUNDATION  TRUTHS 


not  reach.  Their  direction  is  certain  and  yet 
each  of  them  vanishes  into  a  mist  through  which 
knowledge  cannot  penetrate,  but  faith  can  find  a 
way.  And  yet,  after  all,  this  knowledge  of  God 
does  suffice  for  men  to  live  by  it.  Every  one  does 
not  feel  this  sufficiency,  but,  for  centuries,  hu¬ 
man  beings  have  lived  and  worked  and  suffered 
and  died  and  on  the  basis  of  that  knowledge  have 
hoped  for  an  unending  life  beyond.  We  must 
never  forget  the  evidential  value  of  this  fact. 

But  the  question  comes  back  with  renewed 
force:  How  can  I  find  out  God?  If  He  is  not 
to  be  reached  by  human  reason,  how  can  He  be? 
There  is  truth,  let  us  freely  admit  it,  in  Herbert 
Spencer’s  statement  that  the  “Power  which  the 
universe  manifests  to  us  is  inscrutable,”  but  this 
does  not  involve  the  further  conclusion  which 
Huxley  draws  that  He  is  not  only  unknowable 
but  that  He  cannot  reveal  Himself.  We  must 
face  the  facts  of  religion  as  honestly  as  we  face 
the  facts  of  other  spheres  of  human  thought. 
The  evidence  which  these  facts  supply  cannot  be 
lightly  cast  to  the  wind  as  impossible  and  there¬ 
fore  untrue.  And  after  all  there  are  certain 
facts.  First  of  them  is  that  very  universal  be¬ 
lief  in  a  Divine  Being  to  which  we  referred  a 
few  minutes  ago.  The  common  consensus  of  hu¬ 
man  opinion  gives  an  evidence  to  the  existence 
of  such  a  Being  which  demands  attention.  But 
how  did  men  get  it?  In  some  people  it  grew  out 
of  a  reverence  for  the  great  men  of  past  days; 
among  others  the  great  powers  of  nature  gave  it 


21 


OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH 

shape  and  form.  But  when  we  have  said  this 
we  have  not  covered  the  whole  of  human  ex¬ 
perience.  On  the  eastern  shore  of  the  Mediter¬ 
ranean  Sea  there  lived  a  people  whose  influence 
on  human  history,  and  especially  human  reli¬ 
gious  history,  is  unequalled,  so  far  does  it  out¬ 
reach  all  other  religious  influences.  I  need  not 
name  them,  but  behind  all  their  influence  lies 
this  fact  of  their  religious  belief :  God  has  re¬ 
vealed  Himself.  The  understanding  by  which, 
in  far  off  Ur,  Abraham  knew  God  as  supreme 
above  all  other  gods;  the  burning  bush  which 
showed  Him  to  Moses  as  a  personal,  living  Being ; 
the  vision  which  revealed  to  Isaiah  His  wonder¬ 
ful  power  and  holiness,  are  but  scattered  ex¬ 
amples  of  that  which  is  the  constant  factor 
throughout  the  Jewish  history;  God  revealed 
Himself  to  Moses  and  the  Prophets.  “No  man 
by  searching  could  find  out  God”  as  Job  sug¬ 
gests,  but  God  unveiled  Himself  to  men.  The 
Unknown  God,  whom  the  Athenian  in  his  igno¬ 
rance  worshipped,  was  made  known  by  St.  Paul 
not  by  argument  but  by  the  story  of  the  revela¬ 
tion  of  Him  by  His  own  Son,  Whom  He  raised 
from  the  dead. 

It  is  important  to  keep  this  truth  very  clearly 
in  our  minds  today.  The  Christian  knowledge 
of  God  is  not  something  which  men  have  worked 
out  for  themselves,  though  they  have  worked  out 
the  phraseology  by  which  they  would  express  it. 
The  facts  beneath  are  revealed  by  God  Himself, 
Who  whether  speaking  by  the  prophets  or  in  the 


22  SOME  FOUNDATION  TRUTHS 


Person  of  His  Son  has  been  teaching  us.  “No 
one,”  as  St.  John  says,  “has  ever  seen  God  at  any 
time.  The  only  begotten  Son,  who  is  in  the 
bosom  of  the  Father,  He  hath  revealed  Him.” 
God  is  knowable,  but  only  as  He  makes  Himself 
known.  And  furthermore,  we  must  always  re¬ 
member  that  this  knowledge  of  God  has  to  be 
through  finite  means.  Our  knowledge  is  all  con¬ 
ditioned  by  the  facts  of  our  finite  existence,  and 
God’s  revelation  of  Himself  is  likewise  condi¬ 
tioned.  “We  see  through  a  glass  darkly”  as  St. 
Paul  tells  us.  “The  natural  man  receiveth  not 
the  things  of  the  spirit  of  God  for  they  are  fool¬ 
ishness  unto  him,  and  he  cannot  know  them  be¬ 
cause  they  are  spiritually  examined.”  But  be¬ 
cause  this  knowledge  of  the  infinite  Spiritual  Be¬ 
ing  is  a  meditated  knowledge,  given  us  through 
finite  means,  it  does  not  imply  that  He  is  none 
the  less  real.  We  do  not  comprehend  God,  i.  e. 
fully  understand  Him,  perfectly  know  Him ;  but 
we  can  none  the  less  apprehend  Him,  and  hope 
that  the  reflection  we  have  now  in  the  mirror  of 
His  revelation,  however  dim  and  incomplete,  will 
in  some  future  day  give  place  to  the  vision  of  the 
reality  when  we  shall  see  Him  face  to  face. 

There  is  a  second  problem  which  we  must 
touch  upon,  because  it  is  so  greatly  to  the  fore 
just  now,  the  problem  of  evolution  and  the  rela¬ 
tion  of  God  to  nature.  The  importance  of  the 
subject  demands  a  treatment  much  fuller  than  is 
possible  here,  and  I  can  only  indicate  a  few  of 
the  points  which  are  involved.  At  the  forefront 


OF  THE  CHKISTIAN  FAITH 


23 


of  these  we  should  never  forget  that  evolution  is 
a  theory  of  the  method  by  which  the  universe  has 
become  what  it  is.  It  is  a  modus  operandi.  But 
the  moment  we  say  this  we  raise  the  essential 
question;  Who  works?  What  are  the  “Laws  of 
Nature”?  Are  they  impersonal  forces,  or  are 
they  human  generalizations  based  upon  man’s  ob¬ 
servance  of  the  way  things  happen?  In  the  last 
analysis,  the  “Laws”  are  man’s  own  explanations 
and  they  must  reveal  the  power  behind  which 
works  through  them,  rather  than  a  mere  imper¬ 
sonal  force.  Pere  Didon  has  expressed  this  very 
beautifully  in  these  words :  “The  Spirit  of  God 
is  the  soverign  force.  He  commands  the  gen¬ 
eral  evolution,  and  presides  over  the  ordered  and 
progressive  movement  of  the  universe.  For  as 
He  entered  upon  chaos  and  matter  to  bring  into 
existence  the  being  which  feels,  into  animal  life 
to  produce  the  being  who  thinks,  He  entered  into 
the  being  who  thinks  that  the  earth  may  give 
its  fruit  and  that  man  may  see  the  Saviour 
arise,  the  Holy  One,  the  Son  of  God.”  1 

The  great  divisions  between  what  in  older 
phraseology  were  called  the  kingdom  of  matter, 
the  vegetable  kingdom  and  the  animal  kingdom 
and  the  kingdom  of  man,  are  not  the  only  ones 
in  which  the  Spirit  of  God  can  be  said  to  enter. 
Thomson,  in  the  Gifford  Lectures  for  1918,  1919, 

1  Bp.  Henson  has  brought  out  that  the  very  fundamental 
assumption  on  which  all  scientific  knowledge  is  based,  the 
presence  of  purpose  in  nature,  assumes  the  fact,  though  it 
is  not  always  admitted,  that  there  must  he  behind  the  pur¬ 
pose  one  who  purposes. 


24  SOME  FOUNDATION  TRUTHS 


lias  traced  out  the  lines  of  evolution  in  entire 
sympathy  with  the  best  thought  of  modern  sci¬ 
ence,  but  when  one  has  analyzed  the  problem  as 
he  presents  it,  there  remains  still  the  fact  that 
the  change  from  one  great  group  of  creatures  to 
another,  e.  g.,  to  use  his  own  case,  that  from  rep¬ 
tiles  to  birds,  may  show  a  likeness  between  the 
two  but  it  also  shows  the  entrance  of  something 
new,  which  was  not  in  the  lower  order;  and  is 
the  essential  mark  of  the  new.  Whence  comes 
this?  It  cannot  evolve  of  itself  for  it  is  not  even 
in  the  simplest  form  in  the  lower  order.  Revela¬ 
tion  says  it  is  the  hand  of  God.  Beneath  Cre¬ 
ation  lies  the  Creator,  and  in  some  mysterious 
way  H'e  sustains  it.  This  is  especially  true  in 
the  revelation  of  God  as  given  in  the  Old  Testa¬ 
ment.  The  nineteenth  Psalm  which  sings,  “The 
heavens  declare  the  glory  of  God  and  the  firma¬ 
ment  showeth  His  handiwork” ;  and  the  great 
Psalm  of  the  sea,  the  one  hundred  and  seventh, 
which  ends  “whoso  is  wise  and  will  observe  these 
things  even  they  shall  understand  the  loving 
kindness  of  the  Lord”  are  but  two  of  the  count¬ 
less  passages  which  point  out  the  truth  of  revela¬ 
tion  that  God  is  the  Creator  of  all  things  visible 
and  invisible.  Nor  is  the  New  Testament  less 
explicit,  though  the  references  are  not  so  fre¬ 
quent.  St.  Paul’s  speech  at  Athens  and  his 
opening  argument  in  the  Epistle  to  the  Romans 
bear  witness  to  the  truth  that  God  has  made 
Himself  known  by  ‘the  visible  creation,  even  His 
eternal  power  and  deity’;  while  our  Lord  Him- 


OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH 


25 


self  in  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  emphasises  the 
continual  care  by  God  of  His  creatures. 1 

Over  against  these  two  great  philosophical 
problems  lie  the  difficulties  which  come  out  of 
ignorance.  God,  as  an  invisible  spiritual  being, 
behind  and  under,  above  and  throughout  the  Uni¬ 
verse,  is  hard  to  understand ;  and  there  are  those 
to  whom  this  truth  comes  not  as  something  help¬ 
ful,  but  as  a  difficulty  in  belief.  For  such  it  is 
sometimes  hard  to  pray  when  first  taught  that 
God  is  a  spiritual  and  not  a  material  Being.  The 
difficulty  is  a  real  one,  and  yet  its  answer  lies 
plainly  upon  the  face  of  the  Scriptures.  The 
spiritual  Being,  absolutely  immaterial,  has  re¬ 
vealed  Himself  not  only  through  men’s  minds, 
but  in  the  person  of  Jesus  Christ,  to  Whom  as 
a  matter  of  fact  we  owe  the  clear  teaching  of  this 
very  truth ;  and  the  solution  of  the  difficulty  is 
found  in  remembering  that  Jesus  Christ  is  Him¬ 
self  God,  and  that  in  and  through  Him  not  only 
do  we  know  God  but  are  enabled  to  approach 
Him  acceptably  in  prayer  and  worship. 

hi 

The  Christian  Idea  of  God  is  not  a  mere  matter 
of  the  intellect.  It  is  pre-eminently  practical. 
It  involves  consequences.  If  it  be  true  we  can- 

i  It  is  this  fact  which  explains  the  miracles,  “acts  depart¬ 
ing  from  the  ordinary  processes  of  nature”;  non  contra 
naturam  sed  contra  qua  est  nota  natura  as  St.  Augustine 
phrases  it;  and  acts  which  challenge  attention  to  some  truth 
or  revelation  of  God. 


26  SOME  FOUNDATION  TRUTHS 


not  ignore  it,  nor  Him  Whom  it  reveals.  We 
must  believe  in  Him;  our  soill  must  make  that 
personal  self-surrender  to  Him  by  which  He  rules 
our  life,  which  we  call  Faith.  In  the  various 
problems  and  trials,  the  difficulties  and  doubts, 
as  well  as  the  joys  and  privileges  of  life,  we  must 
find  Him  and  learn  to  live  in  dependence  upon 
Him.  And  furthermore  we  are  forced  to  feel 
the  responsibility  which  such  certainty  brings. 
Like  the  Apostles  “we  cannot  but  speak  the 
things  which  we  have  seen  and  known.” 

Too  often  men  are  content  with  this  expression 
of  their  relation  to  God  Who  has  revealed  Him¬ 
self.  Once  more  let  us  turn  back  to  Isaiah  or 
forward  to  the  Revelation.  There  we  see  the  vi¬ 
sion  of  the  very  presence  of  God  described,  “high 
and  lifted  up,  and  His  glory  fills  the  heavens.” 
But  we  see  more  than  this;  we  see  before  Him 
the  angelic  hosts  praising  Him  and  saying  “Holy, 
holy,  holy,  Lord  God  of  Hosts.  Heaven  and  earth 
are  full  of  Thy  Glory.”  We  see,  with  St.  John, 
the  great  multitude  which  no  man  can  number 
from  every  nation  and  kingdom  and  people  wor¬ 
shipping  before  Him.  The  highest  expression  of 
our  acceptance  of  the  Christian  Idea  of  God  is 
not  found  merely  in  a  life  lived  in  faith  and  hope 
and  love;  it  must  show  itself  in  the  worship  of 
Him  Who  sent  His  only  and  most  dearly  beloved 
Son  that  we  might  see  Him  and  know  Him  and 
in  Him  give  ourselves  completely  to  fulfil  God’s 
purpose  for  men. 


CHAPTER  II 


THE  CHRIST  OF  THE  NEW  TESTAMENT 

What  does  the  New  Testament  tell  us  about 
Jesus  Christ?  What  are  His  claims  upon  us? 
These  are  the  most  vital  questions  man  can  face. 
But,  before  we  can  answer  them,  we  must  stop 
and  ask  ourselves  another ;  What  can  we  believe, 
today,  about  the  New  Testament? 

The  real  test  of  the  claims  of  our  Lord  upon 
us  is  not  the  New  Testament.  That  is  the  rec¬ 
ord  of  what  the  Church  has  believed  about  Him 
and  of  what  she  has  thought  of  sufficient  perma¬ 
nent  value  to  preserve.  The  evidence  to  the 
Person  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth  rests  upon  a  wider 
foundation  than  the  New  Testament,  even  the 
fact  of  the  Church  herself  and  her  unbroken  wit¬ 
ness  to  Him.  But  after  all  this  is  admitted  as 
true — and  it  is  true — the  New  Testament  carries 
us  very  near  to  His  Own  day,  and  gives  us  what 
purports  to  be  first  hand  evidence  to  His  life 
and  teaching  and  thus  to  Himself.  What  then, 
we  ask,  can  we  believe  about  the  New  Testament? 

I 

On  the  surface  the  New  Testament  is  a  collec¬ 
tion  of  twenty-seven  writings,  commonly  called 


28  SOME  FOUNDATION  TRUTHS 


books,  written  by  different  people  and,  as  we 
shall  see,  over  a  period  of  nearly  half  a  century. 
Four  of  these  books  purport  to  be  portrayals  of 
the  life  of  Jesus  Christ,  “memoirs  of  the  Apos¬ 
tles”  Justin  Martyr  called  them  in  the  second 
century.  The  fifth  is  a  second  volume  of  one  of 
the  Gospels,  known  as  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles. 
There  are  thirteen  Epistles,  letters  that  is,  which 
claim  to  be  written  by  St.  Paul,  one  to  the 
Hebrews,  seven  short  letters  by  four  different 
persons  attributed  ultimately  to  Apostles  and  for 
that  reason  included  finally  in  the  collection,  and 
last  a  book  called  the  Apocalypse,  or  Revelation, 
of  which  St.  John  is  the  traditional  author. 

These  twenty  seven  books  were  collected  to¬ 
gether  during  the  first  half  of  the  second  century, 
but  not  all  at  once  nor  all  together.  The  Epistles 
of  St.  Paul  seem  to  have  been  the  earliest  collec¬ 
tion.  The  Gospels  were  grouped  later.  Some 
uncertainty  existed  until  well  into  the  third  cen¬ 
tury  about  the  inclusion  into  the  collection  of 
seven  of  our  books:  Hebrews,  Revelation,  St. 
James,  St.  Jude,  II  St.  Peter  and  II  and  III  St. 
John.  The  final  decision  was  due,  not  to  any 
act  of  councils  nor  to  a  formal  decree,  but  to  the 
final  acceptance  by  the  Church  that  they  were 
writings  of  Apostles  which  had  been  used  in  the 
Church  during  the  past  years,  and  so  were  to 
be  believed  and  accepted  as  of  permanent  value. 

We  must  keep  clear  the  distinction  between 
the  formation  of  the  books  into  a  collection, 
which  became  authoritive  as  the  only  collection 


OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH 


29 


of  the  Sacred  Books  of  the  Church,  and  the  writ¬ 
ing  of  the  books.  Both  elements  combine  to 
give  the  New  Testament  its  status  in  the  Church, 
but  the  two  are  quite  separate.  The  finally  de¬ 
termining  factor  was  the  belief  that  the  books  in 
question  came  from  Apostles,  and  were  there¬ 
fore  first  hand  evidence  to  what  Jesus  Christ 
said  and  did  and  of  what  the  Church  of  the  first 
century  believed;  and  for  this  reason  they  were 
put  into  the  collection  we  call  the  New  Testa¬ 
ment.  We  must  account  for  both  these  elements 
in  any  explanation  of  Inspiration  which  may  be 
given.  The  books  were  written  by  men  filled 
with  the  Holy  Spirit,  and  so  we  call  them  the 
writings  of  inspired  men;  but  also  the  men  who 
had  collected  them  during  the  next  two  cen¬ 
turies,  i.  e.  the  Church,  were  also  inspired.  Lid- 
don  suggests  this  idea  in  his  sermon :  The  In¬ 
spiration  of  Selection. 

With  possibly  one  exception  all  of  these  books 
were  written  in  the  first  century.  The  investiga¬ 
tions  of  the  past  century  have  proved  this  con¬ 
clusively.  No  scholar  of  reputation  disputes  the 
general  statement.  Let  us  see  what  we  can  say 
about  the  books  in  detail.  The  earliest  collection 
contains  St.  Paul's  Epistles,  which  are,  with  one 
probable  exception,  the  oldest  books.  The  thir¬ 
teen  epistles  which  claim  to  be  by  him  fall  at  once 
into  two  main  groups.  The  earlier  group  is 
made  up  of  the  ten  which  were  written  before  or 
during  the  Captivity  in  Rome  with  the  account 
of  which  the  Acts  closes.  The  other  three  are 


30  SOME  FOUNDATION  TRUTHS 


the  so-called  Pastoral  Epistles,  those  to  St.  Timo¬ 
thy  and  to  St.  Titus.  There  is  no  responsible  ob¬ 
jector  to  the  first  ten,  and  the  sounder  criticism 
of  today  connects  St.  Paul  very  closely  with  the 
Pastorals.  Some  critics  hesitating  to  admit  the 
actual  apostolic  authorship,  ascribe  these  later 
letters  to  a  member  of  St.  Paul’s  company,  writ¬ 
ing  for  the  Apostle;  but  the  balance  of  opinion 
would  make  St.  Paul  the  actual  author  of  these 
three  short  letters,  explaining  the  differences  in 
vocabulary  by  the  change  in  the  subject,  and  the 
stress  upon  the  organization  as  due  to  the  prog¬ 
ress  of  Church  life  during  the  decade  prior  to  the 
fall  of  Jerusalem. 

The  other  Epistles  stand  on  different  grounds. 
I  St.  Peter  is,  no  doubt,  the  work  of  the  Apostle, 
but  the  almost  overwhelming  opinion  of  even 
conservative  scholars  of  today  is  unwilling  to 
accept  him  as  the  author  of  the  Second  Epistle 
which  bears  his  name,  and  dates  it,  if  he  is  not 
its  author,  early  in  the  second  century.  Of  the 
three  Johannine  Epistles  we  can  say  very  cer¬ 
tainly  that  they  were  written,  all  of  them,  by  the 
same  man  who  wrote  the  fourth  Gospel.  The  Sec¬ 
ond  and  Third  are  very  short  and  this  probably 
explains  our  failure  to  find  them  quoted  during 
the  earliest  ages,  and  their  omission  from  the 
lists  of  books  of  that  period,  so  that  they  fall 
among  what  Eusebius  called  the  Disputed  Books. 
The  Epistle  by  St.  James  is  believed  by  many  to 
be  the  oldest  of  all  the  New  Testament  writings, 
and  its  author  is  most  probably  St.  James  the 


OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH 


31 


Lord’s  brother,  “bishop  of  Jerusalem,”  and  not 
the  Apostle  to  whom  it  was  attributed  in  the 
third  century.  A  similar  explanation  tells  the 
story  of  the  Epistle  of  St.  Jude.  The  most  in¬ 
teresting  problem  is  the  authorship  of  the  Epis¬ 
tle  to  the  Hebrews;  which  was  accepted  in  the 
West,  where  it  was  believed  that  St.  Paul  wrote 
it,  and  rejected  at  first  in  the  East  where  it  was 
thought  he  did  not.  The  western  opinion  became 
the  dominant  one  and  the  Church  accepted  it  as 
a  part  of  the  Scriptures.  No  one  knows  who 
wrote  it,  but  it  was  written  before  the  fall  of 
Jerusalem  in  the  year  70  A.  d.  ;  and  an  old  second 
century  tradition  which  attributes  it  to  St. 
Barnabas  has  much  to  commend  it.  The  Revela¬ 
tion  has  also  had  a  stormy  history  and  men  have 
been  divided  between  St.  John  the  Divine  as  the 
author  and  some  one  else,  and  between  the  days 
of  Nero  and  those  of  Domitian.  The  balance  of 
present  day  opinion  would  put  it  in  the  days  of 
Nero  and  make  it  the  work  of  the  Apostle. 

When  we  turn  to  the  Gospels  we  face  the  most 
serious  critical  problems.  We  cannot  now  go 
into  details.  Certain  facts  stand  out,  as  gener¬ 
ally  accepted.  First  of  all  we  may  believe  that, 
the  oldest  of  the  Gospels  is  St.  Mark,  and  that  it 
is  the  work  of  the  Evangelist  whose  name  it 
bears,  based  upon  the  public  teaching  of  the 
Apostle  Peter;  which  means  that  we  may  quite 
properly  think  of  St.  Peter  as  the  source  of  this 
account  of  our  Lord,  with  John  Mark  of  Jerusa1 
lem  as  a  sort  of  secretary  or  interpreter.  The 


32  SOME  FOUNDATION  TRUTHS 


Gospel  was  written  as  it  stands,  save  that  the 
closing  page  was  probably  lost,  and  the  present 
ending,  16 :  9-20,  was  added  in  the  second  cen¬ 
tury  to  make  up  for  the  lost  conclusion.  Closely 
related,  in  time,  to  the  earliest  Gospel  is  a  collec¬ 
tion  of  Christ’s  teachings,  together  with  certain 
narratives,  which  is  described  in  the  celebrated 
quotation  from  Papias,  the  second  century 
scholar,  as  written  in  Hebrew  by  St.  Matthew 
and  translated  as  each  one  might.  We  have  no 
copy  of  this,  and  it  is  quite  certain  that  onr  Gos¬ 
pel  of  St.  Matthew  is  not  that  collection.  Mod¬ 
ern  scholarship  has  constructed  out  of  passages 
peculiar  to  St.  Matthew  and  St.  Luke  a  document 
which  men  call  “Q”  which  is  thought  to  repre¬ 
sent  to  some  degree  this  earlier  writing  of  St. 
Matthew.  This  is  one  of  the  widely — I  had  al¬ 
most  said  generally — accepted  “results  of  mod¬ 
ern  criticism.”  For  myself  I  am  still  uncon¬ 
vinced  of  the  truth  of  it,  but  it  underlies  the  mod¬ 
ern  reconstruction  and  explanation  of  the  Gos¬ 
pel  attributed  to  St.  Luke  and  also  that  known 
as  St.  Matthew’s.  In  the  opening  section  of  St. 
Luke’s  Gospel  he  tells  us  that,  in  writing  his  ac¬ 
count  of  the  Life  of  Jesus  Christ,  he  has  used  the 
writings  and  verbal  evidence  of  men  who  had 
first  hand  knowledge.  Modern  scholars  say  that 
of  these  two  were  in  all  probability  St.  Mark’s 
Gospel  and  Q,  together  with  a  body  of  additional 
material  which  he  used  in  the  section  beginning 
at  the  end  of  the  ninth  chapter.  In  similar  fash¬ 
ion  St.  Matthew’s  Gospel  is  believed  to  be  a  com- 


OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH 


33 


pilation  by  some  unknown  author  built  up  from 
St.  Mark  and  Q  which  he  uses  with  a  freedom 
that  allows  him  to  amend  it  to  suit  the  prejudices 
of  his  readers.  Be  this  as  it  may — and  again  let 
me  register  my  unwillingness  to  accept  these 
conclusions  as  true — we  have  the  three  Synoptic 
Gospels,  with  their  common  outline  dealing 
chiefly  with  the  Galilean  Ministry  of  our  Lord 
together  with  the  accounts  of  the  last  week  in 
Jerusalem,  and  containing  in  addition  to  the 
chief  body  of  facts  which  St.  Mark  relates  much 
of  what  the  Master  taught,  together  with  a  num¬ 
ber  of  facts  which  St.  Mark  does  not  relate,  and 
prefaced  in  both  St.  Matthew  and  St.  Luke  by  the 
two  dissimilar  but  not  contradictory  accounts 
of  Christ’s  birth  and  childhood.  The  second  vol¬ 
ume  of  St.  Luke’s  history  is  what  we  call  the  Acts, 
ending  abruptly  with  the  summary  of  St.  Paul’s 
imprisonment,  and  written  with  such  accuracy 
of  statement  and  reference  to  geographical  and 
political  conditions  that  it  is  today  one  of  the 
most  trusted  of  the  books  of  the  New  Testament. 

The  final  problem,  the  great  problem,  is  the 
authorship  of  the  Fourth  Gospel,  attributed 
through  all  the  Christian  centuries  to  St.  John, 
the  son  of  Zebedee,  the  “beloved  disciple”  of  the 
Master,  and  for  a  century  and  a  quarter  the  cen¬ 
ter  of  attack.  The  outcome  of  the  discussion 
which  that  century  has  produced  is  first  of  all 
the  establishment  of  the  approximate  date.  No 
longer  can  any  one  question  that  it  was  written 
at  about  the  end  of  the  first  century.  Traditional 


34  SOME  FOUNDATION  TRUTHS 


belief  on  this  is  right.  Furthermore  it  is  quite 
clear  that  the  Johannine  Epistles  and  the  Gos¬ 
pel  are  by  the  same  man,  and  the  weight  of  evi¬ 
dence  to  the  Gospel  is  strengthened  by  that  to 
the  First  Epistle.  The  book  is  the  product  of 
some  one  who  actually  lived  through  the  scenes 
it  describes.  The  marks  of  the  eye-witness  are 
constant,  and  cannot  be  explained  away.  There 
are  problems  of  the  scene  of  the  Ministry,  which 
is  Jerusalem  rather  than  Galilee,  that  need  ex¬ 
planation;  and,  again,  the  Gospel  deals  with  a 
different  set  of  truths  which  are  not  so  different 
after  all;  and  last  the  speeches  of  Jesus  Christ 
in  St.  John  are  not  like  those  in  St.  Matthew. 
Valid  explanations  of  these  discrepancies  are  not 
impossible.  Jerusalem,  the  center  of  religious 
life  and  the  headquarters  of  Jewish  religious 
leaders,  would  of  necessity  claim  some  of  Christ’s 
time.  He  would  naturally,  there,  deal  with 
somewhat  different  problems,  or  at  least  handle 
them  in  a  different  way  from  that  which  He  used 
in  Galilee.  Then  too,  we  must  admit  that  St. 
John,  writing  more  than  sixty  years  after  the 
events,  with  almost  a  lifetime  of  teaching  and 
memory  behind  him,  would  assimilate  the  Mas¬ 
ter’s  manner  of  speech  and  perhaps  even  put  into 
his  own  words  what  the  Lord  had  said.  The  evi¬ 
dences  for  the  Apostle’s  authorship  of  the  Gos¬ 
pel  are  stronger  than  the  objections;  and  unless 
one  has  invincible  prejudice  against  it  one  may 
quite  safely  say,  with  Drummond,  “In  my  judge¬ 
ment  it  is  Johannine.”  The  only  alternative 


OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH 


35 


possible  is  that  some  intimate  disciple  of  the  old 
Apostle,  writing  for  him  and  at  his  direction,  ac¬ 
tually  phrased  the  words  so  that  the  witness  is 
St.  John’s,  though  the  language  may  be  that  of 
his  disciple;  but  of  this  there  is  no  evidence 
neither  does  it  explain  the  disappearance  from 
history  of  such  a  person  as  the  author  would  be, 
and  there  is  no  need  for  such  an  explanation  in 
the  facts  of  the  Gospel  itself. 

The  books  of  the  New  Testament,  then,  go  back 
into  the  first  century,  and  St.  James  is  the  oldest 
of  them  all,  dating  about  45  A.  d.  St.  Paul’s 
epistles  were  all  written  between  51  and  64,  when 
he  was  put  to  death  under  Nero.  The  earlier 
Gospels  fall  probably  between  60  and  70,  or  a  lit¬ 
tle  later.  There  is  some  good  reason  for  dating 
St.  Mark  and  St.  Luke  in  the  earlier  period  and 
St.  Matthew  as  later.  St.  John  belongs  about 
95.  The  rest  of  the  New  Testament  falls  be¬ 
tween  60  and  80,  save  II  St.  Peter,  which  if  mod¬ 
ern  views  prevail  about  that  writing,  belongs  in 
the  first  part  of  the  second  century. 

We  can  say  then,  in  answer  to  our  enquiry, 
that  in  the  New  Testament,  we  have  a  collection 
begun  in  the  second  century  and  completed  early 
in  the  third,  of  first  century  writings,  almost  all 
of  which  had  Apostles  for  their  authors;  and 
that  all  of  them  bear  evidence  to  what  the 
Church  knew  and  believed  about  Her  Founder, 
Jesus  Christ.  We  can  therefore  go  back  with 
confidence  to  these  twenty  seven  books  and  from 
them  seek  fearlessly  the  answer  to  our  question : 


36  SOME  FOUNDATION  TRUTHS 


What  does  the  New  Testament  tell  us  about 
Jesus  Christ? 


ii 

There  are  two  ways  to  approach  this  question. 
We  can  attempt  to  put  ourselves  in  the  position 
of  the  Apostles  before  the  Lord’s  resurrection; 
and,  following  the  modern  cry  “Back  to  Jesus,” 
seek  to  find  in  the  Gospels  the  record  of  Who  and 
what  Hb  was.  This  attempt  on  the  part  of  a 
great  body  of  people  today,  both  of  scholars  and 
the  ordinary  student,  is  in  reality  an  attempt 
to  do  the  impossible.  If  we  could  approach  the 
subject  as  adults  who  never  had  any  idea  of 
Jesus  Christ,  and  if  we  were  trained  students 
of  history,  we  might  do  this ;  or  at  least  go  as  far 
as  the  records  lead  us.  But  we  are  none  of  these. 
No  one  of  us  can  approach  this  subject  except 
with  the  religious  experience  of  our  childhood 
behind  us.  At  the  very  beginning  of  that  we 
learned  to  know  of  Jesus  as  the  Christ,  a  fact 
which  the  disciples  did  not  know.  We  were  ac¬ 
customed  to  worship  Him  and  think  of  Him  as 
God  long,  long  before  we  could  dream  of  ap¬ 
proaching  the  problem  of  the  evidence  to  Him. 
Few  indeed  are  there  who  could,  therefore,  face 
these  questions  without  prejudice.  As  Dean  J. 
Armitage  Robinson  says  in  his  “Thoughts  for 
Teachers  of  the  Bible” :  “We  all  of  us  practi¬ 
cally  began  with  the  Creed  which  declares  Him 
to  be  ‘the  only  begotten  Son  of  God’  and  ‘our 


OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH 


37 


Lord’ :  with  the  plain  statements  of  His  wonder¬ 
ful  Birth,  His  Death  and  Burial,  His  wonderful 
Resurrection  and  Ascension,  and  His  future  Re¬ 
turn  to  Judgment.  We  have  seen  Him  whole 
from  the  outset.  In  the  light  of  all  this  we  have 
read  the  Gospels — read  them  as  the  Church  reads 
them  and  has  always  read  them  in  her  most  sol¬ 
emn  services,  as  complementary  the  one  to  the 
other,  and  with  no  attempt  to  distinguish  be¬ 
tween  them.  That  has  been  our  method  of  ap¬ 
proach,  and  it  has  ruled  our  criticism.  We  have 
never  felt  under  an  obligation  to  discover  a 
merely  human  Jesus.  In  the  main,  though  not  in 
every  detail,  it  is  true  to  say  summarily  that  we 
have  begun  with  the  teaching  of  St.  Paul  with  the 
preincarnate  Christ  and  the  great  redemptive 
facts.  We  have  come  to  the  Gospels  in  the  light 
of  the  Epistles.  And  so  we  have  found  in  the 
Gospels  the  mystery  which  we  had  learned  to  ex¬ 
pect,  and  our  surprise  has  been  that  the  Life 
should  after  all  be  so  truly  and  simply  human  as 
it  there  appears.” 

Furthermore  the  method  is  unhistorical  in  its 
treatment  of  our  material.  The  Gospels  did  not 
come  first,  nor  do  they  pretend  to  give  the  story 
of  Jesus  as  a  merely  human  person.  Even  St. 
Mark  begins  the  statement,  according  to  the 
older  reading,  which  cannot  be  “safely  rejected”  : 
“The  Beginning  of  the  Gospel  of  Jesus  Christ 
the  Son  of  God”;  and  St.  Luke  tells  us  quite 
frankly  that  he  is  writing  in  order  that  Theophi- 
lus  may  have  a  fuller  knowledge  about  the  truths 


38  SOME  FOUNDATION  TEUTHS 


he  had  already  learned  at  the  mouth  of  his 
teacher.  The  Gospels  were  written  for  Chris¬ 
tians  ;  and  they  one  and  all  presuppose  the  knowl¬ 
edge  of  the  Christ  which  the  Christian  had ;  and 
it  is  this  presupposition,  which  underlies  all  they 
say,  that  makes  it  impossible  for  us  to  go  back 
fully  into  the  days  when  men  did  not  know  who 
Jesus  of  Nazareth  was. 

The  other  approach  is  the  approach  from  the 
way  of  the  Acts  and  the  Epistles  and  this  is  the 
historical  approach.  We  see  what  men  who 
lived  in  the  life  time  of  the  Apostles  believed 
about  Jesus  Christ,  what  they  taught  about  Him, 
with  what  presuppositions  they  wrote  their  let¬ 
ters,  compiled  their  histories  and  recorded  their 
memories  of  those  days  when  they  saw  and  heard 
Him  and  actually  felt  Him  with  their  own  hands. 
Further  this  is  the  more  correct  method  his¬ 
torically  because  in  the  Epistles,  as  I  have  said, 
we  go  back  nearer  to  the  days  of  our  Lord’s  ac¬ 
tual  life  upon  earth  than  we  do  in  the  Gospels; 
they  are  actually  older.  I  shall  therefore  begin 
with  them. 

The  most  outstanding  fact  is  the  silence  of  the 
Epistles  concerning  the  details  of  the  life  of  our 
Lord.  They  all  find  in  Him  their  inspiration, 
and  He  is  the  very  heart  of  the  life  of  these 
writers ;  all  depends  upon  Him,  and  yet  you  will 
find,  in  the  Epistles,  almost  nothing  about  His 
earthly  life.  This  may  be  due  to  the  fact  that 
men  knew  those  details  from  the  general  knowl- 


OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH 


39 


edge.  They  were  known  in  every  bazaar  in 
Palestine  as  Streeter  says.  It  may  also  be  due 
to  the  fact  that  converts  were  fully  instructed 
in  the  facts  of  that  life,  and  the  letters  did  not 
concern  themselves  with  these  questions.  The 
importance  of  this  latter  point  must  not  be  over¬ 
looked.  The  Epistles  come,  each  of  them,  out  of 
an  especial  situation,  and  an  actual  one.  They 
are  letters  written  by  living  men  to  living  men 
in  a  real  situation  in  their  own  religious  lives. 
They  are  not,  not  even  Romans  nor  Hebrews  is, 
tracts,  nor  theses,  nor  theological  essays.  They 
breathe  the  breath  of  a  throbbing  world  and  of 
men  who  are  trying  to  find  out  in  that  world 
what  Jesus  Christ  would  have  them  to  do  and 
who  He  really  is.  But  for  whatever  reason,  the 
Epistles  are  silent  about  the  details  of  the  Life 
of  Christ.  They  tell  us  who  He  is,  and  how  He 
came  into  human  life;  they  tell  us  of  His  birth, 
His  death,  and  Resurrection  and  of  His  session 
in  Heaven;  and  in  so  doing  they  remind  us  of 
the  Creed.  But  there  they  stop. 

Their  primary  question,  on  this  side,  is,  Who 
is  Jesus  of  Nazareth?  When  St.  Peter  began  to 
preach  in  Jerusalem  on  Pentecost,  he  had  two 
things  to  explain;  The  descent  of  the  Spirit 
which  had  drawn  the  crowd  to  one  place,  and 
Who  Jesus  is.  Consequently  we  find  him,  in 
that  first  Christian  sermon,  not  only  asserting 
but  proving  that  the  gift  of  which  the  crowd  were 
witnesses  was  sent  by  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  ‘a  man 
approved  of  God  among  you/  after  He  had  been 


40  SOME  FOUNDATION  TRUTHS 


exalted  by  the  right  hand  of  God,  and  that  this 
gift  was  in  entire  accord  with  the  prophecy  of 
Joel.  But  the  point  of  St.  Peter’s  sermon  is  that 
‘God  had  declared  by  raising  Him  from  the  dead’ 
that  the  One  who  had  sent  this  gift,  whom  they 
knew  as  Jesus  of  Nazareth  and  had  crucified, 
was  the  Lord  and  Christ.  It  is  noteworthy  that 
the  Apostle  is  not  content  with  proclaiming  that 
God  had  made  Him  Christ,  but,  and  this  is  the 
emphatic  word,  Lord,  the  term  which  is  regu¬ 
larly  used  in  the  Greek  Old  Testament  as  the 
translation  of  Jehovah.  This  emphasis  reap¬ 
pears  over  and  again  in  the  Apostle’s  sermons 
and  addresses,  so  that  we  are  not  surprised  to 
read  in  his  sermon  to  Cornelius  that  ‘Jesus  is 
Lord  of  all,’  and  to  find  the  Apostle  attributing 
to  Him  that  which  the  Jew  believed  God  alone 
could  grant,  the  forgiveness  of  sins.  The  same 
assertion  of  belief  reappears  in  St.  Peter’s  First 
Epistle,  along  with  the  interpretation  of  the 
great  facts  of  His  death  and  resurrection  and 
the  practical  consequences  of  belief  in  Him  by 
Whom  we  are  reborn,  Who  is  the  object  of  the 
worship  of  men  and  supreme  over  all  created  be¬ 
ings,  ‘angels  and  authorities  and  powers  being 
made  subject  unto  Him.’ 

The  Apostles  all  teach  the  same  great  funda¬ 
mental  truths  about  Jesus  Christ;  although  they 
express  them  differently.  It  is  not  surprising, 
therefore,  to  read  throughout  St.  Paul’s  epistles 
passage  after  passage  and  to  find  him  building 
his  whole  teaching  on  the  fact  which  he  him- 


OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH 


41 


self  had  learned  to  believe  in  the  days  which  fol¬ 
lowed  the  Vision  on  the  road  to  Damascus.  He 
then  knew  that  Jesus  was  the  Christ,  that  sin 
and  death  had  not  conquered,  but  that  God  had 
declared  Him  in  raising  Him  from  the  dead.  It 
was  really  but  a  step  from  this  to  the  belief  that 
Jesus  was  God  and  it  is  not  at  all  surprising  to 
find  St.  Paul,  after  a  few  days  with  the  disciples 
in  Damascus,  immediately  proclaiming  in  the 
synagogues  that  “ Jesus  is  the  Son  of  God.”  We 
cannot  follow  in  detail  the  story  of  this  declara¬ 
tion  as  we  read  it  in  his  epistles.  Certain  facts 
stand  out,  however,  and  we  must  not  pass  them 
over.  The  earliest  of  the  epistles  were  written 
on  the  second  journey,  at  Corinth,  and  in  them 
we  find  our  Lord  spoken  of  as  God’s  Son,  who  is 
to  come  in  the  last  days  as  Judge,  and  He  is 
coupled  in  the  salutations  with  the  Father  as 
equal  to  Him.  But  before  St.  Paul  had  written 
to  the  Thessalonians  he  had  been  preaching 
Jesus  Crucified  as  the  Christ,  and  Christ  as  the 
Son  of  God,  and  had  even  gone  so  far  as  to  prove 
from  heathen  poetry  that  God  was  something  far 
more  than  the  idols  of  silver  and  gold,  and  to 
assert  that  He  had  revealed  Himself  to  them  in 
Jesus,  Whom  he  set  before  them  in  such  a  way 
that  the  Athenians  believed  he  was  proclaiming 
Him  to  be  God.  There  is  no  real  difference  in 
the  truths  proclaimed  though  there  is  a  fuller 
and  clearer  definition  of  it  in  St.  Paul’s  later 
epistles.  Romans  leaves  no  possibility  of  doubt 
about  the  Apostle’s  belief,  which  as  he  told  the 


42  SOME  FOUNDATION  TRUTHS 


Galatians  lie  had  received  not  from  a  man  but 
from  God;  and  this  belief  he  states  very  clearly 
in  the  beginning  of  the  epistle  to  the  Romans 
when  he  says  that  God  had  “declared  His  Son 
Jesus  Christ  our  Lord  to  be  the  Son  of  God  with 
power  according  to  the  spirit  of  holiness  by  the 
resurrection  of  the  dead.”  This  belief  of  the 
Apostle  is  absolutely  fundamental  to  his  whole 
teaching,  for  the  value  of  the  redemption  from 
sin  and  the  deliverence  from  its  power  arises 
from  the  fact  that  Hb  is  God’s  Son,  in  the  like¬ 
ness  of  human  flesh,  to  whom  worship  is  due  as 
God  blessed  for  ever,  yet  Who  is,  as  he  writes 
the  Galatians,  “born  of  a  woman,  born  under  the 
law  to  redeem  them  who  were  under  the  law.”  It 
is  however  in  the  four  epistles  called  the  “Cap¬ 
tivity  Epistles”  that  we  get  the  clearest  defini¬ 
tion  of  the  Person  of  Jesus  Christ.  Not  only  in 
the  celebrated  passage  of  Philippians  2,  the 
Epistle  for  Palm  Sunday,  where  the  absolute 
Deity  and  the  true  humanity  are  clearly  pro¬ 
claimed;  but  the  pre-existence  and  supremacy 
of  Him  “who  is  manifested  in  the  flesh”  is  set 
forth  in  clear  terms  in  the  opening  passages  of 
the  Epistle  to  the  Colossians  and  reappears 
quite  definitely  in  Ephesians. 

There  can  be  no  question  that  what  the  Apos¬ 
tles  believed,  and  from  the  Day  of  Pentecost 
taught,  was  that  Jesus  of  Nazareth  was  the 
Christ  of  Prophecy  and  of  Jewish  expectation, 
and  truly  divine.  It  is  important,  in  view  of  the 
development  of  the  Creed  to  which  we  shall  come 


OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH 


43 


later,  to  notice  very  briefly  the  facts  upon  which 
they  laid  stress.  They  are  all  agreed  in  empha¬ 
sizing  the  reality  of  His  humanity  though  St. 
Paul  alone  in  the  Epistles  implies  directly  the 
fact  of  His  Virgin  birth.  The  events  between 
His  birth  and  His  death  are  passed  over  in  si¬ 
lence,  save  for  the  reference  in  II  St.  Peter  to  the 
Transfiguration.  But  the  great  stress  of  them 
all,  upon  which  they  base  their  teaching  and  by 
which  St.  Peter  and  St.  Paul  prove  the  Deity  is 
the  fact  of  Christ’s  Death  and  Resurrection. 
The  significance  of  His  Death  is  never  lost  to 
sight  with  the  Apostles.  J esus  died,  according  to 
their  belief,  not  because  of  the  hatred  of  the  Jews, 
nor  in  consequence  of  the  antagonism  raised  by 
His  teaching,  but  in  order  that  through  it  men 
might  obtain  forgiveness.  This  stood  for  them 
as  the  all  essential  fact  of  His  Ministry,  though 
of  course  they  never  disassociated  it  from  His 
resurrection.  To  the  minds  of  the  Apostles,  in 
contradistinction  to  the  modern  view,  the  im¬ 
portant  things  are  the  facts  of  His  Being  and 
life  rather  than  the  truths  which  He  taught.  But 
neither  St.  Peter  nor  St.  Paul,  still  less  St.  John, 
stop  with  the  resurrection.  Jesus  the  Christ  de¬ 
clared  such  by  the  power  of  the  Resurrection  is 
alive  today.  That  is  the  secret  of  the  Church’s 
life  and  ministry.  Jesus  Christ  is  not  only  alive, 
but  He  is  everliving  to  make  intercession  for  us. 
The  Ministry  are  gifts  from  Him,  in  Whose 
Name  and  by  Whose  power  they  act;  and  the 
Church  itself  is  none  less  than  the  Body  of 


44  SOME  FOUNDATION  TRUTHS 


Christ,  filled  with  the  Spirit,  being  gradually  per¬ 
fected  and  gathering  into  itself  all  the  families 
of  the  earth.  No  where  do  we  get  this  belief  in 
the  Ascended  and  active  Lord  more  clearly  de¬ 
clared  than  in  the  Revelation.  The  life  of  the 
churches  comes  from  Him  who  stands  in  their 
midst  and  as  the  object  of  their  worship  holds 
the  keys  of  death  and  of  hell,  and  sends  messages 
of  comfort  and  guidance,  of  reproof  and  exhorta¬ 
tion,  to  the  churches  under  the  Apostle’s  espe¬ 
cial  care. 

The  Christ  of  the  New  Testament,  so  far  as  the 
Epistles  are  concerned,  is  the  incarnate  Son  of 
God  of  the  Creeds.  What  do  the  Gospels  tell 
us  about  Him?  We  must  remember  what  we 
saw  a  while  ago,  that  the  earlier  Gospels  were 
written  between  thirty  or  forty  years  after 
Christ’s  resurrection  and  while  they  give  true, 
trustworthy  records  of  the  “memories  of  the 
Apostles”  they  do  not  pretend  to  give  anything 
like  a  history  of  His  life,  as  we  moderns  use  this 
term.  No  one  can  approach  the  Gospels  to  study 
their  witness  to  Jesus  Christ  without  facing  the 
question  of  miracles.  Are  they  or  are  they  not 
possible?  What  are  they?  Perhaps  the  latter 
question  should  be  faced  first  and  no  one  has 
ever  put  the  question  more  clearly  than  St. 
Augustine:  Non  contra  naturam  sed  contra 
quam  est  nota  natura,  not  against,  contrary 
to,  Nature  but  contrary  to  Nature  as  it  is  known. 
They  are  interwoven  into  the  Gospel  narrative 
in  such  a  way  that  you  cannot  take  them  out 


OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH 


45 


of  it.  Either  these  are  true  or  the  records  are 
not  true;  but  no  one  questions  that  they  were 
written  as  true  and  that  the  writers  understood 
that  they  were  describing  unusual  facts.  If  the 
Gospels  are  true  then  miracles  are  to  be  ex¬ 
plained  either  as  unusual  facts  or  as  facts  of 
which  the  Apostles  give  an  interpretation  which 
modern  men  would  phrase  very  differently.  The 
prejudice  of  the  modern  critics”  is,  as  Bishop 
Gore  shows,  very  strongly  against  the  belief  in 
miracles  as  non-ordinary  events.  The  Gospels 
themselves  describe  them  as  signs,  evidences  of  a 
presence  which  has  this  unusual  power.  They 
are,  as  it  were,  “challengers  of  attention”  to 
some  truth  or  revelation  of  God  and  always  serv¬ 
ing  a  moral  purpose.  Men  may  question  today 
the  evidential  value  of  the  miracles;  miracles 
may  not  appeal  to  the  modern  mind  as  they  did 
in  the  days  of  the  Apostles  or  of  our  own  fathers, 
but  they  are  a  part  of  the  warp  and  woof  of  the 
Gospels  and  can  neither  be  taken  out  nor  can 
they  be  explained  away  under  the  guise  of  a  dif¬ 
ferent  manner  of  speech.  This  might  seem  to  ex¬ 
plain  the  healing  miracles  but  it  will  not  give 
any  solution  of  the  problem  which  the  nature 
miracles  raise;  and  the  evidence  for  one  is  as 
strong  as  that  for  the  other.  In  spite  of  the 
modern  prejudice  we  must  assert  the  reasonable¬ 
ness  and  truth  of  the  miracles  which  stand  out 
as  sign  posts  to  a  divine  revealation  which  chal¬ 
lenges  men’s  attention. 


46  SOME  FOUNDATION  TRUTHS 


We  are  all  more  or  less  familiar  with  the  evi¬ 
dences  of  the  Gospels  to  our  Lord’s  Person  and 
work ;  hut  I  must  not  neglect  to  gather  in  a  few 
words  some  of  the  more  important  elements  in 
it.  He  stands  in  the  pages  as  one  who  has  lived 
a  unique  life,  with  a  character  which  the  ages 
have  always  recognised  as  the  highest  ideal  ever 
set  before  men.  What  first  strikes  one  is  the 
strange  contradictions  in  our  Lord’s  character. 
There  never  lived  a  man  who  was  so  absolutely 
humble  as  He  was;  “When  He  was  reviled  He 
reviled  not  again,  when  He  suffered  He  threat¬ 
ened  not,”  “If  I  have  spoken  evil  bear  witness  of 
the  evil  but  if  well  why  smitest  thou  me?”  So 
humble  was  He  that  Nietzsche  spurned  his  ideal 
as  belittling  to  the  human  family;  and  yet  who 
ever  made  the  claims  which  Jesus  made?  He 
asserts  that  His  is  the  right  to  modify  the  funda¬ 
mental  moral  law  spoken  by  God  on  Sinai ;  He  is 
to  judge  the  world  living  and  dead;  He  is  ab¬ 
solutely  without  sin,  and  has  authority  to  forgive 
it.  Claims  such  as  these  are  not  consonant  with 
humility  if  they  are  false,  nor  has  the  explana¬ 
tion  of  insanity  any  possible  ground.  The  old 
alternative  of  the  middle  ages  is  absolutely  valid : 
Utrum  Deus  an  non  bonus,  He  is  either  God 
or  not  good.  If  He  be  the  most  perfect  model  of 
humanity  and  if  He  made  these  claims  to  su¬ 
preme  divine  power  there  is  but  one  possible  solu¬ 
tion  to  the  dilemma ;  He  is  God.  Christ’s  char¬ 
acter  stands  out  in  the  pages  of  the  Gospels  not 
only  because  of  its  strange  contradictions  but 


OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH 


47 


because  of  its  inherent  qualities.  There  is  a 
charm  and  grace  about  Him  which  draws  men  to 
Him,  His  tenderness  and  strength  were  a  new 
experience  in  His  day  as  in  all  days.  The  quiet 
dignity  with  which  He  withstood  His  enemies 
or  faced  the  charges  of  the  Jews  before  Pilate 
has  always  been  a  wonder.  Artists  have  loved  to 
picture  it,  and  in  the  “Christ  before  Pilate”  of 
Munkacsy  and  the  “Christ  Descending  the  Steps 
of  the  Prsetorium”  of  Dore  the  artists  have 
caught  the  wonderful  power  that  this  dignity 
gives.  He  comes  down,  in  Dore’s  picture,  with 
clear  eyes,  fearlessly  facing  the  most  terrible 
death  which  the  world  knew,  and  so  showing  not 
only  a  unique  dignity  but  a  courage  which  has 
had  many  followers  but  has  never  been  sur¬ 
passed.  The  courage  of  our  Lord  must  strike  one 
over  and  over  again ;  the  actual  physical  courage 
in  the  face  of  hostility,  the  moral  courage  in  the 
face  of  temptations,  and  the  courage  of  a  firmly 
fixed  purpose  which  led  Him  on  in  spite  of  the 
opposition  of  the  Jews  and  the  blindness  of  the 
disciples  until  He  stood  before  Pilate  the  object 
of  bitterest  hatred  which  men  could  vent  on  a 
fellow.  These  are  but  some  of  the  outstanding 
but  less  commonly  emphasized  traits  of  that 
ideal  character  which  draws  men  to  Him  in  ad¬ 
miration  and  then  in  love. 

The  Gospels  set  the  Lord  Jesus  before  us  not 
only  as  unique  in  character  but  as  a  teacher  the 
like  of  whom  had  never  been  seen.  He  spoke 
with  an  authority  which  no  teacher  of  His  day 


48  SOME  FOUNDATION  TRUTHS 


ever  had:  “Never  man  spake  like  this  man” 
they  said.  His  method  has  no  equal,  and  mod¬ 
ern  teachers  can  find  no  example  of  how  to  teach 
to  compare  to  His.  The  striking'  fact  about  this 
teaching  of  the  Lord  is  that  it  centers  in  Him¬ 
self.  Over  and  over  again  He  draws  men  to 
Himself  as  the  revealer  and  teacher ;  or  by  some¬ 
thing  which  He  does.  This  is  particularly  true 
of  that  record  of  Him  which  St.  John  gave  us 
so  that  “men  might  believe  that  Jesus  is  the 
Christ  the  Son  of  God  and  believing  might  have 
life  in  His  name”  But  it  is  not  limited  to  the 
Fourth  Gospel  and  there  are  no  passages  in  it 
that  are  more  outstanding  in  this  particular 
than  those  in  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  in  St. 
Matthew  and  others  in  both  St,  Mark  and  St. 
Luke.  And  yet  as  He  says  He  speaks  what  He 
has  been  commissioned  to  speak  and  what  He 
has  learned  of  the  Father.  The  same  motive 
seems  to  lie  behind  Him  which  later  lay  behind 
the  Apostles  when  they  said:  “We  cannot  but 
speak  what  we  have  heard  and  seen,”  or  as  St, 
John  phrases  it  in  his  epistle:  “What  we  have 
heard  and  seen  that  declare  we  unto  you.”  The 
teaching  of  Jesus  Christ  is  His  and  is  about 
Himself,  but  it  is  only  what  His  Father  has 
given  Him  to  preach. 

Of  course  the  Gospels,  equally  with  the  Epis¬ 
tles,  though  not  more  strongly  even  if  more  ex¬ 
tensively,  set  our  Lord  before  us  as  absolutely 
human,  while  also  truly  divine.  There  is  no 
single  element  of  humanity  which  is  missing  in 


OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH 


49 


Him  save  that  which  is  due  to  sin  in  Himself. 
And  it  is  striking  that  the  Gospel  which  most 
emphasizes  the  Deity  is  the  most  definite  in  evi¬ 
dence  of  his  true  humanity.  When  I  say  this  of 
course  I  do  not  forget  that  the  Person  of  Jesus 
Christ  was  not  human  but  divine.  He  who  is  set 
forth  as  truly  man  is  not  a  human  person. 

It  must  be  familiar  to  you  that  when  our  Lord 
led  the  apostles  to  confess  that  He  was  “the 
Christ  the  Son  of  the  Living  God”  He  accepted 
without  the  slightest  contradiction  their  confes¬ 
sion  as  true.  He  never  let  them  lose  sight  of 
His  being  somewhat  more  than  a  great  teacher 
or  as  possessed  of  a  peculiar  authority  that  was 
derived  from  God  and  yet  was  His  very  own.  It 
is  true  that  these  claims  are  more  clearly  un¬ 
folded  in  St.  John;  his  assertions  there  are  more 
strong  and  striking ;  yet  they  are  not  only  in  the 
Fourth  Gospel.  This  is  so  true  that  if  the  ex- 
tremest  critics  of  the  last  century  had  been  able 
to  prove  their  contentions — which  they  were  not 
able  to  do — and  if  the  Fourth  Gospel  had  been 
proved  to  be  a  late  second  century  writing,  our 
loss  would  have  been  the  detail  of  the  evidence 
it  gives  to  His  Person  and  the  beautiful  form  of 
His  teaching.  The  Fact  of  His  Deity  and  the 
definiteness  of  His  claims  to  be  divine  would 
still  have  remained. 

One  further  note  demands  our  attention  before 
I  sum  up,  and  that  is  the  phrases  by  which  the 
evangelists  speak  of  Him  rather  than  the  ac- 


50  SOME  FOUNDATION  TRUTHS 


counts  they  record  of  His  actual  words  and 
deeds.  We  have  already  seen  how  the  opening 
of  St.  Mark  speaks  of  Him  as  “Son  of  God,” 
“The  Gospel  of  Jesus  Christ  the  Son  of  God.” 
St.  Luke  builds  up  the  genealogy  to  God  by  way 
of  Adam  asserting  a  divine  origin  in  a  different 
sense  and  he  frequently  refers  to  our  Lord  as 
the  Lord,  a  phrase  that  may  have  no  more  sig¬ 
nificance  than  “Master”  but  is  one  that  certainly 
carries  with  it  the  Old  Testament  association 
with  the  divine  name.  In  St.  Matthew’s  pro¬ 
logue  itself  we  have  evidence  of  no  more  than 
the  fact  that  Jesus  is  the  Christ,  yet  he  goes  on 
at  once  to  speak  of  the  virgin  birth  of  Him  who 
is  God  with  us.  It  is  in  the  Prologue  of  St. 
John,  however,  that  we  find  the  clearest  state¬ 
ment  of  the  person  of  Jesus  Christ  who  is  there 
called  the  Logos,  “Who  was  with  God  and  was 
God”  and  yet  “tabernacled  with”  men,  who  have 
beheld  “His  glory,  the  glory  of  the  only  begotten 
of  the  Father  full  of  grace  and  truth.”  And  to 
these  very  formal  phrases  we  must  add  the  fact 
that  the  men  who  wrote  these  Gospels  wrote  to 
prove,  as  St.  John  said,  that  Jesus  of  Nazareth 
was  God’s  Son  and  that  men  might  live  by  faith 
in  Him. 


in 

The  Church  has  striven  all  through  her  his¬ 
tory  to  make  plain  what  this  basic  fact  of  Chris¬ 
tian  belief  really  is.  The  earlier  centuries  as 


OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH 


51 


they  faced  the  problems  of  the  Person  of  Jesus 
Christ  in  the  light  of  the  knowledge  and  phil¬ 
osophy  of  that  day,  defined  her  belief  in  the 
Nicene  Creed  and  summed  it  up  in  the  Decrees 
of  the  Council  of  Ephesus,  asserting  that  He  is 
truly  God,  not  the  chief  of  creatures;  perfect 
man,  with  all  that  makes  true  manhood;  one 
person,  not  two,  i.  e.  God  Incarnate  not  God 
abiding  for  a  while,  as  some  heathen  deities  were 
said  to  have  done,  in  a  human  person;  and  that 
this  union  between  God  and  man  in  the  Person 
of  the  Son  of  God  was  such  that  each  nature  was 
perfect,  complete  in  itself,  not  mixed  together 
so  that  we  had  some  strange  composite,  partly 
divine  and  partly  human. 

But  men  are  not  content  with  the  philosophy 
of  the  fifth  century.  The  new  discoveries  of  the 
more  recent  past  have  led  men  to  new  explana¬ 
tions  of  the  universe  and  to  question  again  who 
and  what  is  Jesus  Christ.  Dr.  Tennant  in  the 
Constructive  Quarterly  for  1921  has  summed 
this  up  in  two  most  interesting  articles  although, 
his  conclusions  do  not  swing  with  the  Nicene 
Creed.  Was  Jesus  Christ  merely  a  great  reli¬ 
gious  genius,  one  who  had  an  insight  into  reli¬ 
gion  and  a  skill  in  interpreting  it  as  Beethoven 
and  Wagner  had  in  Music,  or  Titian  and  Rem¬ 
brandt  in  Art?  So  some  would  say,  but  this  does 
not  explain  the  story  of  eighteen  centuries  of 
Christian  faith  nor  can  it  justify  His  own 
claims.  Was  He  one  in  whom  preeminently 
there  was  a  divine  indwelling,  a  saint  beyond 


52  SOME  FOUNDATION  TRUTHS 


all  who  ever  lived,  one  who  is  the  very  acme  of 
the  divine  immanence  which  is  seen  in  all  nature 
and  so  in  man?  If  so  how  is  it  that  the  traits 
of  saintliness  of  all  types,  the  sense  of  sin  and 
of  humility,  are  so  lacking  in  Him  who  by  con¬ 
trast  claims  to  be  divine  and  sinless?  Neither 
of  these  nor  the  old  Arian  demigod  will  solve 
the  mystery.  Jesus  Christ  makes  claims  and  the 
Gospels  tell  us  what  they  were,  the  apostles  pro¬ 
claimed  Him  as  being  what  those  claims  as¬ 
serted,  Very  God  of  Very  God,  yet  truly  man. 
No  other  explanation  will  satisfy  the  facts  nor 
give  sufficient  reason  for  the  story  of  the  past 
nineteen  centuries  of  Christian  history,  but  that 
Christ  as  Bishop  Gore  says  “Is  of  one  substance 
with  the  Father,  that  He  was  completely  human, 
that  His  humanity  had  no  independent  center  of 
personality  in  itself,  but  that  in  the  unity  of  One 
Divine  Person  both  Godhead  and  manhood  re¬ 
main  two  natures  in  one  person.” 

In  this  belief  the  Christian  stands  before  the 
Altar  at  the  Divine  Mysteries  and  proclaims : 

“I  believe  ...  in  one  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  the 
only  begotten  Son  of  God;  begotten  of  His 
Father  before  all  worlds,  God  of  God,  Light  of 
Light,  Very  God  of  Very  God;  begotten  not 
made;  Being  of  one  Substance  with  the  Father, 
By  whom  all  things  were  made:  Who  for  us 
men  and  for  our  salvation  came  down  from 
heaven,  and  was  incarnate  by  the  Holy  Ghost  of 
the  Virgin  Mary,  and  was  made  man.” 


CHAPTER  III 


THE  CREEDS 

No  science  can  make  progess  without  a  body 
of  definitions,  or  terms,  on  whose  meaning  men 
are  agreed.  No  habit  of  life  can  become  the  com¬ 
mon  property  of  men  unless  there  is  similar 
agreements  to  the  principles  on  which  it  is  based 
and  the  characteristics  which  mark  it.  Chris¬ 
tianity  is  a  science  in  the  broadest  sense;  and 
it  too  must  have  its  agreed  statements  or  princi¬ 
ples,  its  terms  and  definitions  which  are  the  com¬ 
mon  property  of  its  members,  and  on  which  the 
life  is  upbuilt.  Further,  Christianity  is  a  habit 
of  life,  a  science  which  springs  out  of  a  group  of 
facts,  which  its  adherents  believe  to  be  facts  and 
concerning  which  they  must  profess  their  faith 
before  they  can  be  accepted  as  members  of  the 
Christian  Church.  All  these  things  point  to 
Creeds,  and  we  find  in  the  entire  course  of  Chris¬ 
tian  history,  that  the  Church  has  had  such  a 
definition,  such  a  statement  of  principle,  such  a 
body  of  facts,  of  which  the  Creed  gives  a  brief 
and  simple  summary.  In  this  chapter  we  have 
to  question  what  the  Creeds  are,  and  the  right 
of  the  Church  to  require  them,  and  the  history 
of  their  development. 


54  SOME  FOUNDATION  TRUTHS 


Christianity,  Catholic  Christianity  at  least,  is 
founded  upon  a  body  of  facts,  not  any  theory  of 
theology  nor  definitions  of  belief.  There  are 
certain  events  which  happened  or  are  to  happen, 
there  are  certain  Persons  Who  lived  or  live ;  and 
upon  the  truth  of  the  existence  of  these  Persons 
and  events  the  Christian  Faith  and  Life  is  built 
up.  The  Creeds  are  the  simple  statements  as  to 
who  and  what  these  are.  We  might  call  them 
prior  definitions  which  call  for  belief  and  for 
which  sufficient  evidence  is  supplied,  rather  than 
axioms  which  are  self  evidently  true.  The 
axioms  of  mathematics  are  assumed  by  thinking 
men  to  be  true  beyond  contradiction  and  to  be 
evident  to  all  intelligent  persons.  There  are  no 
similar  statements  in  Christianity.  There  is 
nothing  which  is  self-evidently  true.  The  Chris¬ 
tian  Faith,  because  it  is  faith  not  knowledge, 
presupposes  the  possibility  that  it  may  not  be 
true.  There  can  be  no  faith  without  the  possi¬ 
bility  of  doubt.  But  the  foundation  facts  of 
Christian  belief  are  buttressed  so  strongly,  we 
believe,  by  evidence,  that  the  thinking  man  is 
bound  to  accept  them;  while  he  who  runs  may 
read  their  truth.  These  foundation  facts,  as 
stated  in  the  formularies,  are  the  Creeds :  State¬ 
ments,  in  other  words,  of  the  events  and  Per¬ 
sons  on  the  basis  of  which  the  Christian  lives 
his  life. 


OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH 


55 


II 

Has  the  Church  a  right  to  require  that  men 
must  accept  the  Creed  before  they  can  enter  the 
Church?  Is  creedal  requirement  a  survival  of 
a  time  of  obscurantism,  or  is  it  justified?  As¬ 
sume  for  the  moment  that  this  is  done;  leave 
aside  for  the  present  the  evidential  question  as 
to  whether  these  facts  are  true  or  false ;  What  is 
the  justification  of  the  demand  that  a  man  must 
believe  them  if  he  be  a  Christian? 

In  the  first  place  the  Church  does  no  more 
than  what  human  societies  and  governments  do. 
No  man  can  enter  certain  fraternal  organiza¬ 
tions  unless  he  be  a  believer  in  God.  I  well  re¬ 
member  how  a  certain  man,  standing  in  a  group, 
and  outspoken  in  his  denial  of  the  existence  of 
God,  was  silenced  by  the  quiet  statement  by  one 
of  the  men  present  that  he  would  have  to  report 
him  to  the  authorities  of  the  organization.  He 
knew  that  he  could  not  continue  his  membership 
without  at  least  a  profession  of  belief  in  God. 
No  one  questions  the  right  of  a  voluntary  human 
society  to  make  such  a  demand.  An  alien,  born 
under  a  foreign  flag,  brought  up  under  foreign 
conceptions  of  government,  wishes  to  become  a 
citizen  of  the  United  States.  In  theory  at  least 
he  has  to  subscribe  to  the  American  conception 
of  government  and  accept,  in  terms,  the  laws  and 
regulations  of  this  Nation  before  he  can  secure 
his  papers  of  citizenship.  As  a  mere  voluntary 
human  society  the  Christian  Church  has  an 


56  SOME  FOUNDATION  TRUTHS 


equal  right  to  require  that  a  man,  before  he  can 
be  admitted  into  her  membership,  shall  accept  as 
true  those  fundamental  facts  upon  which  she  is 
upbuilt. 

More  than  that,  the  Christian  Church  believes 
that  she  is  the  guardian  of  a  divine  revelation. 
The  truths  upon  which  she  is  built  are  parts  of  a 
sacred  deposit,  and  she  has  a  responsibility  for 
this  that  it  may  be  passed  on  from  generation  to 
generation  unimpaired  and  well  secured.  To 
make  this  sure  she  has  again  a  right  to  demand 
before  men  are  admitted  into  her  number  that 
they  shall  accept  these  things  as  true  and  agree 
to  hold  them  firmly  so  long  as  they  are  within 
her  company.  This  Faith  “once  for  all  delivered 
to  the  saints,”  as  St.  Jude  describes  it,  is  a  sa¬ 
cred  trust,  and  the  Apostle’s  exhortation  to  St. 
Timothy  to  “Hold  it  fast”  and  to  “keep  that 
which  is  committed  to  thy  trust”  never  loses  its 
force.  Therefore  it  is  that  the  Church  requires 
that  men  should  accept  and  believe  the  Creeds. 

There  is  a  third  ground  which  justifies  the 
Church’s  demand.  Christianity  is  not  merely 
a  form  of  sound  words;  nor  a  body  of  doctrine. 
The  early  term  which  was  used  to  describe  it  was 
“The  Way.”  We  shall  see  in  a  later  chapter 
what  this  means  in  detail,  for  the  present  we 
must  be  contented  with  the  fact  that  Christianity 
involves  a  definite  form  of  life  and  that  this  life 
depends  upon  the  faith  which  men  hold.  We  are 
coming  more  and  more  to  recognise  that  there 
is  a  vital  connection  between  life  and  belief. 


OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH 


57 


Thinking  men  have  always  seen  this,  but  the 
antagonist  to  definite  Christian  belief  quite  fre¬ 
quently  fails  to  admit  it  as  true ;  but  the  truth  is 
not  affected  by  this  denial  or  neglect.  The  rela¬ 
tion  between  belief  and  conduct  is  shown  on  the 
one  side  in  this  sentence  from  Alexander  Bain : 
“No  belief  is  real  unless  it  guides  our  action/’ 
and  on  the  other  side  by  the  parallel  phrase  of 
Emerson :  “A  man’s  action  is  but  the  picture 
book  of  his  creed.”  When  our  faith  grows  dim 
our  conduct  becomes  uncertain,  and  if  it  is  not 
always  true  it  is  often  true  that  loss  of  faith  is 
due  to,  or  is  followed  by,  a  loss  of  moral  fibre 
and  a  lowering  of  the  ideal  of  conduct.  So 
again,  in  order  to  keep  her  people  to  the  Chris¬ 
tian  ideal  of  living  the  Christian  Church  de¬ 
mands,  and  is  right  in  demanding,  that  they  shall 
accept  as  true  her  belief;  and  asks  when  they 
come  to  be  baptized :  “Dost  thou  believe  all  the 
Articles  of  the  Christian  Faith  as  contained  in 
the  Apostles’  Creed?” 


m 

We  must  be  very  clear  in  our  own  minds  as 
to  what  the  Church  claims  for  the  Creed,  for  this 
determines  to  no  small  degree  both  the  use  of  it 
and  its  binding  force  upon  us.  Her  first  claim 
is  that  the  Twelve  Articles  of  the  Creed,  in  the 
form  in  which  she  gives  them  to  us,  state  facts 
which  are  absolutely  true.  We  shall  return 
shortly  to  the  problem  which  this  statement  in- 


58  SOME  FOUNDATION  TRUTHS 


volves.  Facts  are  matters  of  evidence,  and  dif¬ 
fer  from  opinion  in  that  they  are  not  changeable. 
The  meaning  of  the  terms  in  which  a  fact  is  de¬ 
fined  may  vary ;  men’s  understanding  of  the  sig¬ 
nificance  of  the  fact  is  by  no  means  the  same  for 
all  generations  nor  for  all  the  men  of  the  same 
generation.  The  facts  are  bound  to  be  inter¬ 
preted.  To  this  too  we  shall  have  to  return  later ; 
but  for  the  present  we  are  only  interested  in  the 
statement  that  the  Church  claims  that  the  Creed 
states  facts  which  have  been,  or  are,  or  will  be, 
and  states  belief  in  Persons  who  have  done,  or 
do,  or  will  do  these  things ;  and  these  facts  and 
the  actions  of  these  Persons  are  subject  to  the 
laws  of  evidence. 

Further  the  Church  claims,  not  only  that  con¬ 
duct  in  a  general  sense  depends  upon  faith,  but 
that  each  of  the  twelve  articles  of  her  Faith 
affects  in  its  own  special  way  the  life  men  live. 
Let  me  illustrate.  The  Creed  begins  with  a 
statement  of  belief  in  God ;  that  belief  is  the  back¬ 
ground  of  life.  The  wide  acceptance  by  many 
people  today  of  certain  religious  vagaries  is  in 
no  small  degree  due  to  the  fact  that  the  Chris¬ 
tian  Church  has  failed  to  teach  the  value  in  life 
of  the  belief  in  God;  and  so  men,  having  lost 
sight  of  it  in  the  Church,  have  sought  for  it  else¬ 
where.  Man  is  a  ‘praying  animal’  and  if  he  does 
not  believe  in  God  he  cannot  pray,  but  since  he 
feels  the  need  of  prayer  he  must  have  a  belief  in 
God  of  some  sort.  If  time  allowed  we  might 
illustrate  the  conduct  value  of  belief  in  Jesus 


OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH 


59 


Christ,  in  His  death  and  resurrection  and 
ascension  and  in  His  present  session  in  Heaven. 
Each  article  means  something  in  life,  and  none 
can  be  left  out  without  real  loss.  Men  go  forth 
to  win  the  world  to  Christ  because  they  feel  con¬ 
fident  that  the  belief  in  Him  is  essential  to  a 
right  living  on  the  best  lines  and  they  want 
every  one  to  have  the  experience  of  that  faith  and 
to  live  the  life  it  demands.  And  as  an  essential 
to  such  a  life  they  teach  men  to  believe  the  Arti¬ 
cles  of  the  Creed.  This  moral  value  and  practi¬ 
cal  use  of  the  Creed  is  another  sufficient  reason 
for  the  Church’s  demanding  belief  in  it. 

The  Creed  has  a  further  use.  It  serves  as  a 
corrective  against  error  as  well  as  a  guardian  of 
life.  The  History  of  the  Creeds  will  show  this, 
and  it  is  particularly  evident  in  the  story  of  the 
Nicene  Creed.  Let  me  recall  the  chief  facts  that 
lie  behind  that  statement  of  the  Faith.  In  322 
Arius,  a  Priest  of  Alexandria,  began  to  teach 
that  our  Lord  was  less  than  God  the  Father;  the 
greatest  of  all  creatures,  but  still  a  creature. 
He  made  Him  semi-divine,  a  sort  of  demi-god. 
To  meet  the  serious  situation  which  resulted 
from  the  widespread  acceptance  of  Arius’s 
teaching,  the  Emperor  Constantine  called  the 
leaders  of  the  Church  in  Council  at  Nieea,  in 
325,  in  order  that  this  issue  might  be  settled. 
The  decree  of  the  Council  met,  the  problem  and  in 
the  progress  of  the  Church’s  life  has  proved  to 
be  correct.  Jesus  Christ  was  of  “one  substance 
with  the  Father.”  The  Greek  term  chosen  to  de- 


60  SOME  FOUNDATION  TRUTHS 


fine  this  relationship,  homoousia,  had  a  bad  as¬ 
sociation  from  the  last  century  but  it  alone  met 
the  issue.  It  would  seem  as  if  Constantine  had 
succeeded  in  quieting  the  Church’s  unrest.  But 
it  was  not  long  before  the  controversy  broke  out 
again  even  more  bitterly  and  for  nearly  fifty 
years  the  Church  was  split  into  groups  and 
parties  constantly  changing  and  shifting  in  an 
effort  to  find  some  solution  of  the  question ; 
What  is  the  relation  between  Jesus  Christ  and 
the  Father?  Who  is  He?  During  this  half  cen¬ 
tury,  parallel  with  this  controversy,  and  in  fact 
growing  out  of  it,  there  arose  three  other  prob¬ 
lems:  Shall  the  Kingdom  of  Jesus  Christ  be 
eternal?  Is  He,  if  divine,  truly  human;  or  does 
the  deity  take  the  place  of  His  soul?  Is  the  Holy 
Spirit  a  divine  Person?  The  answer  to  all  these 
questions  was  finally  found  in  the  so-called  Con- 
stantinopolitan  Creed  which  was  accepted  at  the 
time  of  the  second  Council,  that  of  Constanti¬ 
nople  in  381,  as  a  satisfactory  definition  of  the 
Faith,  though  the  Council  itself  did  not  take  any 
action  adopting  the  creed.  The  older  definition 
of  the  Council  of  Nicea,  came  into  its  own  and 
the  Church  as  a  whole  finally  accepted  it  as  a 
true  description  and  statement  of  the  relation 
of  the  Son  to  the  Father.  This  story  of  the  Creed 
of  Nicea  is  an  example  which  can  be  repeated  in 
the  story  of  the  Apostle’s  Creed:  in  the  way  the 
phraseology  of  the  Creed  was  expanded  to  cor¬ 
rect  false  beliefs  in  the  Church. 

But  we  must  remember  that  the  question  be- 


OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH 


61 


hind  the  development  of  the  Creeds — and  they 
have  developed  in  form,  have  been  expanded — 
is  not  one  of  what  should  be  believed  but  of 
what  has  been  believed.  The  318  fathers  who 
gathered  at  Nicea,  scarred  by  their  sufferings 
under  the  persecution  of  Diocletian,  did  not  ask 
What  ought  we  to  say?  What  do  we  believe? 
but  on  the  contrary,  What  is  the  Faith  which 
has  been  entrusted  to  us  by  our  fathers?  And 
the  difficulty  which  made  them  hesitate  so  long 
before  admitting  the  only  word  which  would 
solve  the  problem — homoousia — was  that  this 
very  word  had,  as  I  have  just  said,  a  bad  associa¬ 
tion  and  had  not  been  used  in  the  New  Testa¬ 
ment,  as  descriptive  of  our  Lord.  The  Creeds 
are  guide  posts,  which  in  the  morass  of  human 
vagaries  mark  the  way  that  keeps  the  truth  of 
the  Christian  Faith  clear  and  sure;  that  state, 
in  other  words,  the  facts  that  underlie  that 
Faith  in  terms  which  are  unquestionably  true. 

These  several  values  of  the  Creed  are  shown 

in  the  Church’s  use  of  it.  Before  she  admits 

* 

any  one  into  the  number  of  the  disciples  she  re¬ 
quires  that  they  shall  accept  the  Faith  “once  for 
all  delivered.”  She  guards  the  Truth  from  false 
believers.  She  requires  that  the  man  who  is  to 
be  admitted  to  Holy  Orders  and  so  to  become  an 
official  and  authoritative  mouthpiece  and  witness 
to  the  Faith,  shall  profess  that  same  Faith  in 
its  fullest  form.  No  false  teacher  can  find  his 
way  into  the  company  of  the  Church’s  guides 
unless  he  comes  in  under  false  pretenses,  or  loses 


62  SOME  FOUNDATION  TRUTHS 


his  Faith  in  later  years  when  again  the  Church 
calls  him  to  task  upon  the  basis  of  that  same 
Creed.  Finally  the  Church  uses  the  Creed  in 
her  regular  worship  as  a  reminder  of  the  Faith 
in  which  men  have  been  baptized  and  as  a  con¬ 
stant  inspiration  to  a  holy  life.  The  Creeds  are 
no  barren  forms  of  words  as  used  in  the  Church’s 
life.  They  are  quick  with  life  and  sharp  to  guide 
the  souls  of  men. 


IV 

We  saw  a  little  while  ago  that  the  Creeds  state 
facts  which  men  are  bound  to  interpret,  and  it  is 
this  aspect  of  the  problem  which  arouses  diffi¬ 
culty.  If  these  things  are  facts  in  what  sense 
are  they  true?  How  can  we,  if  we  must,  ac¬ 
cept  them?  I  must  consider  very  briefly  a  few 
of  the  particular  problems  which  arise.  The 
first  will  be,  of  necessity,  the  meaning  of  the 
First  Article  of  the  Creed:  “I  believe  in  God 
the  Father  Almighty  Maker  of  Heaven  and 
earth”;  or  as  it  reads  in  the  Nicene  Creed:  “I 
believe  in  one  God  the  Father  Almighty 
Maker  of  heaven  and  earth,  and  of  all  things 
visible  and  invisible.”  What  does  this  require 
of  us? 

The  word  “Maker”  in  its  original  form  both  in 
Greek  and  Latin  carries  the  sense  of  Creator  as 
well  as  maker.  How  far  is  this  true :  or  in  what 
sense  is  it  true  in  the  light  of  modern  beliefs 
about  nature?  There  is  no  doubt  that  a  century 


OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH 


63 


ago  it  was  interpreted  in  the  light  of  the  philoso¬ 
phy  and  science  of  the  day.  All  interpretation 
of  facts  in  reality  impinge  upon  philosophy,  and 
our  own  interpretation  of  facts  is  largely  in¬ 
fluenced  by  our  theory  of  things,  i.  e.  our  philoso¬ 
phy.  The  old  “fiat”  theory  of  creation,  which 
said  that  it  was  by  immediate  acts  of  God  in 
six  days  of  twenty  four  hours  each,  is  untenable 
in  the  light  of  modern  science  and  philosophy. 
The  theory  of  Evolution,  in  whatever  form  or 
modification,  if  it  rules  God  out  of  the  processes 
by  which  the  world  is  being  developed,  is  not  ten¬ 
able  by  the  Christian.  It  is  contrary  to  the 
Christian  Faith  which  defines  God  as  the 
Creator  and  Maker  of  all  things  seen  and  unseen. 
But  there  is  no  necessary  conflict  between  a  rea¬ 
sonable  belief  in  Evolution  and  the  Creed’s  state¬ 
ment  of  the  fact  that  God  is  the  Creator.  As  I 
showed  in  the  last  Chapter  the  laws  of  nature  are 
the  laws  of  His  working  and  no  doctrine  of  crea¬ 
tion  which  recognizes  that  He  lies  behind  the  pro¬ 
cesses  contradicts  the  Creed.  Rather  it  is  true, 
as  Bishop  Henson  has  pointed  out,  that  the  very 
assumption  of  modern  science  of  a  purpose  in 
nature  requires  a  personal  God  behind  it  as 
author  of  that  purpose. 

Modern  teaching  raises  three  questions  about 
the  statements  concerning  our  Lord,  in  addition 
to  the  elemental  one :  Is  He  truly  God  and  how. 
These  three  questions  are  the  Virgin  Birth,  the 
Resurrection,  and  the  Ascension.  As  to  the 
first,  the  Virgin  Birth,  we  have  the  two  questions 


G4  SOME  FOUNDATION  TRUTHS 


first  of  evidence  and  then  of  credibility.  The 
New  Testament  evidence  to  the  Virgin  Birth  of 
our  Lord,  i.  e.  that  He  was  “conceived  by  the 
Holy  Ghost,  born  of  the  Virgin  Mary/’  thus  hav¬ 
ing  no  human  father,  has  been  stated  and  re¬ 
stated  many  times.  The  evidence  falls  into  four 
lines.  The  oldest  is  St.  Paul’s  statement  in  Ga¬ 
latians  that  “He  was  born  of  a  woman/5  which 
by  itself  would  seem  inconclusive.  The  second  is 
the  account  of  his  birth  as  given  by  St.  Luke  in 
the  first  two  chapters.  It  is  very  interesting  to 
note  that  in  the  last  quarter  century  the  histori¬ 
cal  trustworthiness  of  St.  Luke  has  become  more 
and  more  certain.  Archaeology  and  history 
have  proved  over  and  again  that  he  was  a  care¬ 
ful,  accurate  writer,  who  knew  what  he  meant  to 
say  and  spoke  with  certainty.  He  tells  us  that 
he  had  searched  out  carefully  from  eyewitnesses 
and  hearers  of  the  Lord’s  life  and  teaching  what 
was  true  so  that  his  friend  might  have  assurance 
of  what  he  was  taught  orally.  St.  Luke’s  evi¬ 
dence  to  our  Lord’s  birth  is  full  and  complete. 
He  relates  the  announcement  and  the  fulfilment. 
He  tells  us  that  the  Virgin  was  told  that  the 
“Holy  thing  which  was  to  be  born  of  her  was 
the  Son  of  God,”  and  he  relates  in  detail  the 
story  of  that  holy  birth.  There  can  be  no  ques¬ 
tion  that  St.  Luke  meant  us  to  understand  that 
Jesus  of  Nazareth  was  miraculously  born  with¬ 
out  human  father  by  the  power  of  the  Holy 
Spirit,  the  Virgin  Mary  being  His  mother.  The 
third  strand  is  the  witness  of  St.  Matthew’s  Gos- 


OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH 


65 


pel;  equally  distinct  and  equally  independent, 
giving  the  story  from  an  entirely  different  point 
of  view,  but  with  exactly  the  same  implication. 
One  recalls  Ramsay’s  theory  that  St.  Luke’s  ac¬ 
count  came  to  him  through  “them  of  Herod’s 
household,”  who  had  learned  it  in  turn  from  the 
Blessed  Virgin  herself;  while  St.  Matthew’s  ver¬ 
sion  is  St.  Joseph’s  account,  explaining  the  mys¬ 
terious  event,  given  to  clear  the  reputation  of 
his  wife  from  the  calumny  of  the  Jews.  The 
two  accounts,  whatever  be  their  origin,  are  quite 
clearly  utterly  independent  of  each  other  and  yet 
are  in  absolute  agreement.  In  no  particular  do 
they  contradict  each  other,  but  on  the  contrary 
they  supjflement  one  the  other  so  that  out  of 
them  we  get  a  fuller  story  of  those  early  days. 
The  fourth  witness  is  St.  John,  who  in  his  pre¬ 
face  writes  of  the  birth  of  our  Lord,  the  eternal 
Logos,  in  terms  which  well  imply  that  it  was  not 
by  human  generation.  “He  was  born  not  of 
blood,  nor  of  the  will  of  the  flesh,  nor  of  the 
will  of  man,  but  of  God.”  The  evidence  to  the 
Virgin  Birth  of  our  Lord  is  not  meagre,  but  men 
hesitate  to  accept  it  because  they  feel  that  the 
thing  itself  is  incredible.  It  is  an  “impinging  of 
God”  upon  human  life  which  has  no  parallel  and, 
beyond  all  miracles  save  the  Resurrection  it¬ 
self,  is  impossible.  Bishop  Gore,  in  his  recent 
book  Belief  in  God,  says  of  the  credibility  of  the 
Virgin  Birth  “I  must  confess  that  I  cannot  im¬ 
agine  how  the  birth  of  the  really  sinless  man 
could  have  occurred  without  some  physical  mir- 


66  SOME  FOUNDATION  TRUTHS 


acle,  so  sure  do  I  feel  that  sin  has  somehow  af¬ 
fected  the  physical  stock ;  and  I  once  drew  from 
Huxley  the  admission  that  if  he  believed — what 
he  did  not — that  Jesus  was  strictly  sinless  he 
wmuld  suppose  that  that  involved  as  well  a  phys¬ 
ical  as  a  moral  miracle.”  The  tendency  has 
been  to  make  our  Lord’s  Deity  depend  upon  the 
Virgin  Birth  and  there  are  many  who  could  not 
put  it  in  any  other  way  than  this :  They  believe 
the  Virgin  Birth  on  evidence  and  therefore  be¬ 
lieve  that  Jesus  is  God.  The  order  of  the  Creed 
suggests  another  approach.  We  confess  our  be¬ 
lief  in  Him  as  God  and  then  we  go  on  to  state 
that  He  whom  we  believe  to  be  God  was  born 
into  the  human  family  in  a  miraculous  manner. 
There  are  some  of  us  who  would  put  it  in  the 
other  way  and  say  not  that  we  believe  He  is  God 
because  He  was  born  of  a  Virgin,  but  we  believe 
He  is  God,  and  because  of  this  fact  that 
He  is  God,  we  have  no  doubt  of  the  Virgin 
Birth. 

The  arguments  for  our  Lord’s  Resurrection 
are  familiar  to  most  people,  and  they  are  the 
strongest  group  in  the  whole  body  of  evidence 
to  the  Christian  Faith.  They,  too,  are  many. 
We  have  the  evidence  of  the  New  Testament,  the 
Gospel  narratives  and  the  Epistles  which  assert 
in  terms  which  cannot  be  denied  the  belief  of  the 
Apostles  in  the  resurrection  of  their  Lord.  They 
saw  Him  alive  after  His  Passion,  more  than 
three  hundred  persons  were  alive  twenty  live 
years  later,  who  actually  saw  Him  on  one  spe- 


OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH 


67 


cial  occasion.  There  is  the  evidence  of  the  long 
history  of  the  Christian  Church.  Men  have  be¬ 
lieved  that  Jesus  was  dead  and  is  alive  again 
and  on  the  basis  of  that  belief  have  both  lived 
and  died,  often  the  death  of  a  martyr.  And  the 
Church  is  based  upon  the  fact  of  the  Resurrec¬ 
tion,  for,  if  Jesus  did  not  rise  again  then — it  is 
true  for  all  ages — our  preaching  as  the  Apostle 
said  is  vain.  We  build  up  our  belief  upon  a 
falsehood,  if  He  did  not  rise.  Two  other  present 
day  facts  are  of  equal  validity  in  evidence  to 
this  truth.  The  whole  of  modern  civilization 
dates  the  passing  years  from  the  time  of  His 
birth.  Every  calendar,  every  newspaper  and  the 
documents  of  many  centuries  have  carried  on 
their  face  the  year  of  Christ.  The  sacred  day  of 
the  week  through  the  influence  of  a  religion 
which  arose  from  Judaism  was  changed  from  the 
seventh  day  to  the  first  and,  save  for  the  Jews 
and  even  in  part  by  them,  the  witness  is  born  to 
the  first  day  of  the  week  as  the  memorial  of  some 
event  of  transcendent  importance  which  marked 
that  day.  These  lines,  and  there  are  others  in 
addition,  all  concentrate  upon  the  truth  as  the 
Creed  states  it  that  on  the  third  day,  which  is  the 
first  day  of  the  week,  the  Lord  Jesus  rose  again 
from  the  dead.  But  the  problem  of  the  Resur¬ 
rection  is  not  merely  a  problem  of  evidence. 
Like  that  of  the  Virgin  Birth  it  is  a  problem  of 
reality.  Did  Jesus  come  back  into  his  earthly 
body  changed  or  not,  or  did  He  in  some  way 
make  His  followers  believe  that  He  was  alive  in 


68  SOME  FOUNDATION  TRUTHS 


the  world  beyond?  Is  the  Resurrection  a  fact  or 
a  poetical  description  of  immortality?  There 
can  be  no  question  what  those  who  had  the  best 
chances  to  know  believed.  The  New  Testament 
evidence  is  undoubtedly  for  an  actual  resto¬ 
ration  of  the  soul  to  its  bodily  tenement 
and  the  presence  of  the  Master  not  in  spirit 
form,  ghost  like,  but  as  actually  alive  and 
clothed  in  flesh.  No  attempt  to  explain  it  will 
satisfy  the  evidence  save  the  statement  of  the 
Creed. 

The  Article  which  states  the  Ascension  in¬ 
volves  a  problem  of  interpretation  which  is  less 
difficult  of  solution  when  once  we  accept  the 
Resurrection.  Granted  that  He  rose  again 
clothed  in  the  body  of  His  glory  in  which  He 
showed  Himself  alive  by  many  infallible  proofs, 
and  it  is  not  hard  to  believe  that  He  is  still  alive, 
clothed  in  that  body.  But  what  of  the  expres¬ 
sion  “the  right  hand  of  God  the  Father  Al¬ 
mighty?’7  We  saw  that  God  is  spirit  and  as 
such  has  neither  parts  nor  passions.  In  what 
sense  can  we  use  the  term  “right  hand  of  God?77 
Only  one  is  possible.  It  must  mean  the  place  of 
honor  and  glory  corresponding  to  that  which  the 
right  hand  is  on  earth.  Christ  is  exalted  far 
above  all  heavens.  He  is  lifted  up  and  given  a 
position  before  which  all  created  things  bow  in 
reverent  adoration.  The  expression  describes, 
in  terms  of  man’s  speech,  the  exaltation  of  the 
Ascended  Lord  and  points  out  His  rule  over  the 
earth. 


OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH 


69 


II 

One  further  point  demands  attention  in  this 
connection,  the  development  of  the  Creed.  I 
shall  confine  myself  almost  entirely  to  the  story 
of  the  western  form,  the  Apostles’  Creed  as  we 
call  it.  Our  New  Testament  evidence  shows  but 
little  of  the  very  beginning  of  the  progress.  The 
Christian  converts,  beginning  with  belief  in  God, 
which  they  shared  or  inherited  from  the  Jews, 
had  to  believe  also  in  Jesus  Christ  as  His  Son 
and  in  the  Holy  Spirit.  The  stories  of  the  bap¬ 
tism  of  the  eunuch  and  of  the  twelve  men  whom 
St.  Paul  confirmed  in  Ephesus  tell  us  this.  As 
a  matter  of  fact  the  simplest  Creed  form  which 
has  come  down  to  us  is  quoted  by  St.  Cyril  of 
Jerusalem  and  reads:  “I  believe  in  the  Father 
and  in  the  Son  and  in  the  Holy  Ghost  and  in  One 
Baptism  of  repentance.”  This  form,  while 
quoted  in  the  fourth  century,  undoubtedly  rep¬ 
resents  a  very  early  stage  and  warrants  us  in 
thinking  that  the  original  form  of  Christian  be¬ 
lief  was  little  more  than  a  statement  of  belief 
in  Christ’s  revelation  of  God  as  contained  in  the 
baptismal  formula.  Our  evidence  prior  to  the 
third  century  is  very  scanty  and  we  can  build  but 
tentatively.  These  facts  seem  to  emerge:  The 
Creed  itself  became  a  sort  of  password  or  test 
given  at  the  time  of  baptism  and  known  only  to 
believers  who  were  thus  able  to  identify  them¬ 
selves  as  Christians.  There  was  a  form  gener¬ 
ally  common,  but  by  no  means  identical,  whose 


TO  SOME  FOUNDATION  TRUTHS 


variations  were  not  simply  local,  but  rather  re¬ 
gional.  As  we  study  the  early  forms  of  the 
Creed  which  are  quoted  in  Christian  literature 
we  find  that  they  trace  back  to  two  centers,  to 
Rome  in  the  West,  and  to  Antioch  in  the  East. 
How  close  the  relationship  between  these  two 
centers  may  prove  to  be  is  a  problem  for  future 
study  but  the  evidence  would  seem  to  show  if 
not  a  common  source  at  least  a  common  and 
parallel  development  from  the  Baptismal  for¬ 
mula.  It  was  during  this  period  of  development 
of  the  simply  Baptismal  Creed  that  the  Arian 
controversy  arose  which  brought  about  the  fuller 
and  more  elaborate  Creed  forms  of  the  fourth 
century  which  we  associate  with  the  Nicene 
Creed.  But  we  are  restricting  ourselves  to  the 

o 

Apostles’  Creed  and  that  in  the  West,  and  now 
come  to  the  period  between  the  fourth  century 
when  it  was  beginning  to  assume  its  fuller  form 
and  the  middle  of  the  eighth  century  when  its 
present  form  was  beginning  to  become  familiar 
in  the  West. 

First  of  all  it  may  not  be  amiss  to  recall  the 
reason  for  its  name.  Rufinus  writing  in  the 
fifth  century  tells  us  the  tradition  of  his  own 
time  that  the  Twelve  Apostles,  before  they  sep¬ 
arated  to  preach  the  Gospel  in  the  world,  agreed 
to  write  a  Creed  and  each  one  supplied  a  single 
article,  and  the  twelve  were  put  together  in  the 
form  which  Rufinus  gives  of  the  Apostles’  Creed. 
The  story  is  absurd  upon  the  face  of  it  and  there 
is  not  the  slightest  evidence  that  any  such  event 


OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH 


71 


ever  took  place.  But  perhaps  there  is  under¬ 
neath  a  principle  which  is  true,  viz.,  that  the 
Apostles’  teaching  was  all  the  same  and  that 
there  was  some  common  body  of  facts  which  they 
all  agreed  were  essential.  To  call  this  “the 
deposit”  of  which  St.  Paul  writes  would  be  to 
overstress  a  possibility.  Dr.  Briggs  had  evi¬ 
dently  some  such  thought  in  mind  when  he  ex¬ 
plained  the  Greek  name  of  the  Creed,  Symbolon, 
as  derived  from  the  verb  to  gather  together  and 
thought  of  the  Creed,  or  Symbolon,  as  the  sum¬ 
mary  of  the  Apostles’  teaching.  Probably  the 
safer  explanation  is  that  the  form  of  the  Creed 
which  became  most  familiar  in  the  West  was  the 
development  which  spread  from  Rome  and  was 
known  as  the  Creed  of  the  Apostolic  See,  the  only 
See  west  of  the  Adriatic  established  by  Apos¬ 
tles  ;  and  thence  the  formulary  came  to  be  called 
popularly  the  Apostles’  Creed. 

But  what  happened  between  the  days  of  Ru- 
\finus  and  the  days  of  Pirminius  in  750,  for  the 
Creed  which  Pirminius  quotes  is  the  one  we  all 
know  and  the  Creed  of  Rufinus  is  the  Creed 
which  Marcellus  of  Ancrya  wrote  in  340  to  prove 
his  orthodoxy  while  he  was  in  Rome.  It  runs  as 
follows:  “I  believe  in  God  Father  Almighty, 
And  in  Jesus  His  only  Son  our  Lord;  Who  was 
born  of  the  Holy  Ghost  of  the  Virgin  Mary: 
Was  crucified  under  Pontius  Pilate  and  was 
buried :  Rose  again  from  the  dead  the  third 
day :  Ascended  into  heaven ;  Sitteth  on  the  right 
hand  of  the  Father :  From  thence  He  shall  come 


72  SOME  FOUNDATION  TEUTHS 


to  judge  the  quick  and  the  dead:  And  in  the 
Holy  Ghost :  The  Holy  Church :  The  For¬ 
giveness  of  Sins :  The  Resurrection  of  the 
Flesh.” 

Most  of  the  phrases  which  Pirminius  gives  us 
and  Marcellus  omits  were,  until  recently,  ex¬ 
plained  as  expressions  added  in  Southern  Gaul 
to  meet  special  Gallic  heresies  and  have  been 
called  purely  western  in  origin.  There  is  a  very 
different  explanation.  In  what  we  commonly 
call  the  Balkan  peninsula  in  Roman  imperial 
days  there  was  the  province  of  Pannonia.  It 
was  settled  by  Romans  from  the  neighborhood  of 
Rome  itself,  and  was  always  closely  related  to 
the  mother  city.  The  probabilities  are  that  its 
inhabitants  were  converted  to  Christianity  by 
missionaries  from  Rome,  and  the  type  of  Chris¬ 
tianity  was  distinctly  western  and  not  eastern. 
Through  that  territory  during  the  later  days  of 
the  Empire  ran  the  great  higliro\adl  between 
Constantinople  and  Rome,  by  which  the  cour- 
riers  travelled  and  over  which  the  caravans  of 
the  traders  journeyed  back  and  forth  by  way  of 
Aquileia.  Where  the  merchant  went  the  Chris¬ 
tian  missionary  followed,  and  into  Pannonia 
and  the  regions  round  about  there  came  a  con¬ 
stant  stream  of  eastern  influences;  and  with 
these  eastern  influences  there  came  naturally 
eastern  phraseology  and  eastern  beliefs.  Not  so 
long  ago  a  sermon  of  Niceta  Bishop  of  Remesi- 
ana  was  brought  to  the  notice  of  scholars  in 
which  he  quotes  a  creed.  This  sermon  is  to  be 


OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH 


73 


dated  at  about  375  and  in  the  Creed  it  quotes  we 
find  almost  all  the  phrases  which  are  used  by 
Pirminius  and  used  to  be  quoted  as  western  in 
origin.  They  are  much  more  probably  eastern 
in  origin,  yet  at  the  end  of  the  fourth  century  are 
thus  found  imbedded  in  a  creed  of  western 
origin. 

Before  we  trace  the  progress  of  these  phrases 
in  the  West  we  must  notice  what  they  are.  Some 
are  of  no  historic  value,  just  a  word  here  and 
there  to  clear  up  or  expand  a  phrase,  such  as 
the  addition  of  “conceived”  and  “suffered”  and 
“dead”  and  the  expansion  of  the  expression  “the 
Father”  in  the  statement  of  the  ascension,  to  our 
familiar  “God  the  Father  Almighty.”  These  are 
insignificant;  but  there  is  another  group  which 
have  a  definite  doctrinal  value,  concerning  which 
the  Sermon  of  Niceta  tells  us  much.  I  can  men¬ 
tion  but  four.  In  the  opening  article  the  phrase 
“Maker  of  heaven  and  earth”  does  not  appear 
in  the  early  Roman  Creed  and  it  is  rarely  found 
in  the  West  save  in  restricted  territory  until  the 
eighth  century.  It  is  an  expression  which  St. 
Irenaeus  used  against  the  Gnostices.  But 
Niceta  quotes  it  in  the  Creed  and  it  reappears  in 
Africa  during  the  fifth  and  sixth  centuries.  The 
Galilean  service  books  of  the  seventh  century  in¬ 
clude  it  and  finally  we  find  it  in  the  fuller  form 
in  the  Creed  of  Pirminius.  The  story  of  the 
word  “catholic”  as  applied  to  the  Church  is  very 
similar.  The  history  of  this  word  is  too  well 
known  to  be  repeated  here,  yet  there  is  one  vari- 


74  SOME  FOUNDATION  TRUTHS 


ation  in  its  use  which  we  must  not  forget.  Orig¬ 
inally  it  meant  universal,  but  by  the  end  of  the 
second  or  the  beginning  of  the  third  century  it 
had  come  to  mean  also  orthodox  as  opposed  to 
heretical;  and  this  is  the  meaning  of  the  word 
in  the  West  from  the  time  of  St.  Augustine,  so 
that  from  the  fifth  century  onward  it  has  a  dou¬ 
ble  sense  of  exclusive,  i.  e.  orthodox,  and  in¬ 
clusive,  i.  e.  universal,  comprehending  all  in  one. 
Niceta  gives  us  evidence  of  the  wider  use  in  the 
Creed.  The  expression  descended  into  Hell” 
shows  not  only  in  Niceta  in  375  but  also  in  the 
Fides  Hierony^mii  dated  two  years  later  and 
within  fifteen  years  in  the  Creed  of  Aquileia, 
whence  we  can  trace  its  presence  in  the  creeds  of 
Gaul  and  Spain  and  on  into  Ireland.  The 
fourth  of  these  special  eastern  phrases  which 
were  formerly  attributed  to  western  origin  is  the 
“Communion  of  Saints,”  Both  Niceta  and  Je¬ 
rome  have  it  and  Niceta  discusses  at  length  its 
meaning,  giving  it  that  special  significance  which 
has  marked  it  ever  since  in  the  Western  Chris¬ 
tendom  as  the  interpretation  of  the  previous  ex¬ 
pression  the  Holy  Catholic  Church,  for  says  he : 
“What  is  the  Church  but  the  congregation  of  all 
saints?  For  from  the  beginning  of  the  world 
Patriarchs  as  Abraham,  Isaac  and  Jacob, 
Prophets,  Apostles,  Martyrs  and  all  just  men 
who  have  been,  are  or  shall  be,  are  one  Church 
because  sanctified  by  one  faith  and  life,  marked 
by  one  spirit,  they  constitute  one  body  of  which 
Christ  is  declared  to  be  its  head.  .  .  .  Believe 


OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH 


75 


therefore  that  in  this  one  Chnrch  yon  will  at¬ 
tain  to  the  Commnnion  of  Saints.” 

The  evidence  for  these  four  phrases  runs  with 
marked  similarity.  They  all  appear  in  the  com¬ 
mentary  of  Niceta,  some  in  the  Creed  of  Jerome, 
they  next  appear  in  Aquileia,  on  the  highway 
to,  but  not  in  Rome.  From  Aquileia  they  passed 
across  northern  Italy  into  the  further  West,  ap¬ 
pearing  first  in  Spain  and  later  in  southern 
Gaul.  From  Gaul  they  seem  to  have  reached 
Britain  and  they  appear  in  the  Bangor  Antipho- 
nal.  The  story  is  not  yet  told,  for  these  same 
phrases  wrhich  in  the  latter  part  of  the  fourth 
century  first  appeared  in  the  Creed  in  the  near 
East  and  thence  passed  during  the  next  three 
centuries  by  way  of  Spain  and  Gaul  to  Ireland 
reappear  in  the  northern  parts  of  Italy  and  from 
Bobbio  seem  to  have  been  carried  to  Rome  where 
they  were  incorporated  into  the  Creed  of  the 
Holy  City  and  from  the  middle  of  the  eighth 
century  become  a  part  of  the  Creed  of  the  Apos¬ 
tolic  See. 

What  follows  is  surmise,  but  it  is  more  than 
possibly  true.  The  last  half  of  the  eighth  cen¬ 
tury  was  a  time  of  great  importance  to  the  West¬ 
ern  Church.  It  was  to  end  with  the  crowning  of 
Charles  the  Great  in  Rome  on  Christmas  Day 
800  and  through  his  influence  was  to  come  the 
bringing  into  prominence  of  Roman  customs  and 
rites  and  ceremonies,  accompanied  as  might  be 
expected  with  the  substitution  of  these  services 
for  the  older  local  form  indigenous  to  the  several 


76  SOME  FOUNDATION  TRUTHS 


churches.  It  was  thus  to  see  the  great  break¬ 
down  of  Gallican  rites.  It  is  not  too  much  to 
imagine  that  the  old  Roman  Creed,  carried  by 
earlier  missionaries  into  the  near  East  and  there 
expanded  under  the  influence  of  the  eastern 
creeds  and  eastern  teaching  into  its  fuller  form, 
was  carried  back  westward  across  the  great  high¬ 
ways  of  empire  and  Church  until  finally,  after 
four  centuries  of  wandering,  it  reached  its  an¬ 
cient  home  where  in  time  it  became  the  common 
form  and  whence  under  the  influence  of  Charl- 
magne  it  was  carried  throughout  the  Western 
Church  and  became  the  common  baptismal  creed 
and  the  approved  form  for  the  Declaration  of 
Faith  in  the  Daily  Offices. 

There  was  a  custom  in  England  which  sug¬ 
gests  how  greatly  the  Church  values  the  Creed, 
that  formal  statement  of  the  faith  upon  which 
she  is  built.  Before  the  troops  in  older  days 
went  forth  to  war,  they  were  gathered  in  St. 
Paul’s  Cathedral  in  London  and  when  the  time 
came  for  them  to  say  the  Creed  the  cavalrymen 
drew  their  swords  and  holding  them  aloft  pro¬ 
fessed  their  belief  in  God,  Father,  Son,  and  Holy 
Spirit,  in  whom  they  trusted  and  whose  blessing 
was  invoked  upon  their  campaign.  The  Creed 
was  that  outward  form  of  Faith  for  which  in 
older  days  men  were  ready  to  die,  and  in  which 
today  they  live  and  serve  and,  when  the  call 
comes  in  their  turn  give  up  their  lives  here  to  en¬ 
ter  life  hereafter. 


CHAPTER  IV 


THE  IDEA  OF  THE  CHURCH 

No  one  can  read  modern  religious  books  or 
even  papers  nor  listen  to  serious  conversation 
without  having  to  face  the  problem:  What  is 
the  Kingdom  of  God:  What  is  the  Church; 
What  is  the  relation  between  them ;  are  they  the 
same;  If  not  where  and  what  is  the  Church? 

I 

The  careful  reader  of  the  New  Testament  at 
once  finds  a  distinction  there  in  the  use  of  the 
two  terms  “Kingdom  of  Heaven”  as  St.  Matthew 
puts  it,  or  “Kingdom  of  God”  as  the  rest  of  the 
writers,  and  “the  Church.”  The  Gospels  speak 
of  the  Kingdom;  the  Epistles  of  the  Church. 
That  is  the  general  statement;  we  must  now  ex¬ 
amine  the  exact  usage.  Of  the  two  Greek  words 
used  that  translated  “Kingdom”  is  found  in  the 
New  Testament  140  times  of  which  111  are  in  the 
Gospels  and  of  these  all  but  four  are  in  the  Syn¬ 
optic  Gospels,  leaving  only  29  instances  of  its 
use  in  the  Acts  (8)  and  the  Epistles  (21).  The 
word  translated  “Church”  is  used  111  times  in 
the  New  Testament  of  which  only  three  are  in 


78  SOME  FOUNDATION  TRUTHS 


the  Gospels,  all  in  St.  Matthew,  with  23  in¬ 
stances  in  Acts  and  85  in  the  remaining  writ¬ 
ings.  It  would  seem  therefore  that  Christ’s 
word  is  “Kingdom”  and  the  Apostles’  word 
“Church” ;  and  in  this  fact  lies  the  whole  signifi¬ 
cance  of  the  problem  and  also  its  solution. 

Let  us  examine  first  what  our  Lord  Himself 
says  about  the  Kingdom.  Neither  the  word  nor 
the  idea  was  new.  When  He  began  to  use  it  the 
entire  Jewish  nation  had  been  stirred  by  the  proc¬ 
lamation  of  St.  John  Baptist  that  the  Kingdom 
was  at  hand;  and  the  Baptist  in  turn  had  simply 
taken  over  an  Old  Testament  term  about  which 
there  had  grown  a  body  of  associations  and 
ideas.  The  Old  Testament  prophets  thought  of 
Israel  as  God’s  people.  He  was  their  King,  and 
the  Law  under  which  they  lived  came  from  Him. 
They  were  under  His  rule  and  through  “Moses 
and  the  Prophets”  they  had  been  taught  what 
God  wanted  them  to  do  in  the  three  great  spheres 
of  life.  He  had  given  them  a  law  to  regulate  the 
social  relationships  of  life;  a  law  not  of  prin¬ 
ciples  but  of  precepts,  and  it  touched  virtually 
every  aspect  of  their  common  fellowship  with 
one  another.  He  had  gone  further  and  had 
given  them  minute  directions  as  to  the  way  in 
which  they  were  to  approach  Him  in  worship; 
the  minutiae  of  ritual  were  parts  of  the  Law  of 
God.  More  fundamental  as  we  see  it,  but  less  so 
as  they  understood  it,  the  Law  of  God  finally 
reached  into  their  own  personal  life  and  gave 
them  rules  of  conduct  and  of  individual  morals. 


OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH 


79 


But  on  whatever  side  it  touched  life  it  came  from 
God:  “Hear  O  Israel,”  “Thus  saith  the  Lord 
thy  God,”  was  the  constant  refrain.  The  Chil¬ 
dren  of  Israel  were  a  people  under  God’s  rule, 
owing  allegiance  to  Him;  and  their  kings,  when 
they  had  them, — during  less  than  a  third  of  their 
history — were  only  the  human  agents  by  whom 
God  ruled  the  nation.  This  idea  of  the  Kingdom 
of  God,  as  do  all  ideas  in  the  Old  Testament, 
gradually  unfolded  and  developed  until  we  find 
in  Daniel  the  goal  of  a  perfect  Kingdom  yet  to 
come,  “which  the  God  of  Heaven  shall  set  up,” 
“one  that  shall  never  be  destroyed” ;  “a  Kingdom 
which  is  to  be  an  everlasting  kingdom  which  all 
peoples  and  nations  and  languages  shall  enter 
and  there  serve  its  king.” 

This  great  ideal  was  never  a  finished  ideal  in 
Old  Testament  days,  even  under  the  latest  dat¬ 
ings  of  extreme  modern  criticism.  There  was 
always  set  before  Judah  the  expectation  of  a 
“good  time  coming”  which  was  generally  phrased 
by  the  expression  “The  day  of  the  Lord.”  This 
great  future  event  was  not  wholly  one  of  glory 
and  triumph,  the  idea  of  a  day  of  doom  and  of 
punishment  was  constantly  intermingled  with 
the  note  of  triumph  and  victory.  But  the  latter 
prevailed  as  the  great  encouragement  of  the 
Jews  of  later  generations.  And  they  needed  the 
encouragement.  The  bitter  persecutions  under 
Antiochus  Epiphanes  in  the  second  century  b.  c. 
and  the  iron  heel  of  the  Romans  which  marked 
the  closing  years  of  the  first,  produced  the  nat- 


80  SOME  FOUNDATION  TRUTHS 


Ural  depression  and  on  the  other  hand  made  the 
people  long  for  the  coming  of  the  time  when  the 
people  of  the  Lord  should  once  more  be  free 
and  independent  of  foreign  domination  and 
again  enter  life  in  a  great  Kingdom  whose  glory 
and  grandeur  should  far  outshine  the  golden 
days  of  the  past. 

We  must  not  forget  that  for  Israel  the  Golden 
Age  was  in  the  future,  They  looked  forward  not 
backward,  save  as  the  memory  of  past  prosper¬ 
ity  gave  more  brilliant  color  to  the  future  which 
was  to  surpass  it.  And  it  was  out  of  this  long¬ 
ing  and,  in  a  way,  to  deepen  and  intensify  it  and 
to  encourage  the  Jew  to  a  more  and  more  living 
hope,  that  the  apocalypses  came  to  be  written. 
Their  authors  saw  the  need  of  consolation  and 
encouragement;  they  felt  that  it  could  best  be 
given  in  the  form  of  pictures  of  the  future  put 
into  the  mouths  of  men  of  days  long  gone  who 
were  honored  in  popular  tradition.  The  thought 
of  any  dishonesty  in  the  method  seems  to  have 
had  no  place  or  to  have  been  justified  by  the 
necessity.  Naturally  these  apocalypses  are  most 
varied  in  form  and  the  pictures  they  paint  are  by 
no  means  always  alike;  but  underneath  them  all 
lies  the  common  idea  of  a  new  era  which  would 
be  ushered  in  by  an  act  of  God,  an  era  which 
would  be  a  “holy  happy  order  of  things’’  in  which 
“peace  and  plenty  and  prosperity”  would  be  the 
portion  of  the  faithful.  This  idea,  as  was  to  be 
expected,  was  associated  with  the  picture  of  the 
great  leader  under  whom  this  Kingdom  of  God 


OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH 


81 


would  be  inaugurated.  There  is  almost  as  much 
difference  here  as  in  the  pictures  of  the  Kingdom 
itself.  To  some  writers  he  was  merely  a  Son  of 
David,  that  is  one  of  his  family  who  should  de¬ 
liver  his  people  and  establish  the  Kingdom.  In 
other  apocalypses  he  is  less  definitely  described, 
but  is  spoken  of  as  a  Son  of  Man,  a  human  leader 
of  great  power  and  authority  who  would  play  his 
part  in  the  deliverance  of  his  people  and  then 
disappear.  Occasionally  the  King  is  described 
as  more  than  man,  divine  in  character  and  per¬ 
son  and  so  he  was  called  Son  of  God. 

It  is  hard  to  judge  just  how  widespread  or 
universal  any  of  these  views  were ;  we  cannot  be 
sure  even  of  the  extent  to  which  the  belief  in  the 
Kingdom  of  heaven  was  accepted.  The  Gospels 
however  tell  us  that  “all  men  mused  in  their 
hearts  of  John  whether  he  were  the  Christ  or 
not,”  this  would  imply  a  very  wide  spread  belief 
in  the  coming  of  the  Kingdom  and  it  was  no 
doubt  intensified  by  the  Baptist  himself  as  he 
proclaimed,  herald  like,  in  the  wilderness  of  Ju¬ 
dea  and  up  the  Jordan  valley :  “Prepare  ye;  the 
Kingdom  of  Heaven  is  at  hand.”  And  it  was  to 
a  people  expectant  and  with  their  hopes  fired  by 
the  ministry  of  the  Baptist  that  Jesus  Christ  en¬ 
tered,  announcing  as  He  did  that  the  time  of  ex¬ 
pectation  was  over,  the  Kingdom  actually  come. 

We  must  never  forget  when  we  think  of  Jesus 
Christ  taking  up  something  which  the  prophets 
had  already  foretold  that  He  was  not  content 


82  SOME  FOUNDATION  TRUTHS 


simply  to  re-echo  their  message.  His  task  was 
always  to  give  it  that  fullness  of  interpretation, 
that  deeper  meaning,  which  would  mean  the  frui¬ 
tion  of  their  idea  into  the  perfection  of  His  own 
message.  This  was  particularly  true  of  the  un¬ 
folding  of  the  Kingdom.  His  ideal  was  quite 
different  from  theirs,  and  His  task  was  not 
merely  to  correct  hut  to  unfold  and  to  build  what 
He  came  to  establish  on  their  foundations. 
We  must  therefore  try  to  see  what  were  the 
characteristics  of  the  Kingdom  as  He  gave 
them. 

At  the  outset  we  have  the  story  of  the  conver¬ 
sation  with  Nicodemus,  This  reverent  and  ear¬ 
nest  ruler  of  the  Jews  was  attracted  by  our 
Lord’s  wonderful  power  and  came  to  Him  se¬ 
cretly  to  enquire  about  the  Kingdom.  Christ’s 
answer  was  that  Nicodemus  needed  not  knowl¬ 
edge  but  life,  and  that  the  life,  without  which  he 
could  not  hope  to  see  the  Kingdom,  could  only 
come  to  him  by  the  process  of  a  new  birth.  This 
new  life  was  to  be  spiritual,  a  moral  condition, 
based  upon  Divine  revelation;  but  it  was,  and 
this  was  always  the  Master’s  method,  a  life  into 
which  men  enter  by  an  outward  act.  The  birth 
was  to  be  accomplished  not  in  the  natural  proc¬ 
esses  of  human  generation,  that  could  not  be  re¬ 
peated;  but  by  wTater  and  the  Spirit;  and  as  the 
natural  fleshly  birth  resulted  in  fleshly  life,  so 
this  spiritual  birth,  evidenced  by  water,  was  to 
result  in  spiritual  life.  But  Nicodemus  did  not 
understand  Him. 


OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH  83 


This  spiritual  character  of  the  Kingdom,  so 
different  from  the  popular  Jewish  belief,  under¬ 
lies  all  our  Lord’s  teaching  in  the  parables  and 
more  especially  in  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount. 
The  old  code  of  precepts  was  to  give  way  to  a 
new  body  of  principles;  men  were  to  be  men  of 
personal  character  in  and  of  themselves,  and  as 
such  they  were  to  fulfil  their  lives  among  men 
and  live  in  their  social  relationships.  New 
moral,  social,  and  religious  principles  were  set 
forth  by  our  Lord  with  increasing  clearness  as 
He  made  men  realize  that  the  Kingdom  of 
Heaven  was  not  a  mere  earthly  monarchy.  But 
He  did  not  let  them  think,  as  the  old  apocalyptic 
writers  did,  that  it  was  wholly  future.  There 
was  a  future,  the  whole  coming  age  was  its  fu¬ 
ture;  but  it  began  then.  He  formed  it.  There 
is  no  passage  which  puts  this  more  clearly  than 
His  reply  to  the  Pharisees  when  they  asked  Him 
when  it  would  come.  “It  cometh  not  by  obser¬ 
vation,”  He  said,  “it  is  among  you.”  It  is  al¬ 
ready  here.  But  though  present  it  was  not  yet 
complete  in  its  development;  He  had  to  do  many 
things  before  He  could  send  them  forth  to  pro¬ 
claim  the  good  news  everywhere. 

The  Kingdom  of  God,  as  Christ  preached  it,  is 
a  great  spiritual  rule  but  it  is  not  without  its 
outward  rites.  What  He  said  to  Nicodemus  un¬ 
derlay  all  His  teaching;  over  and  against  the 
spiritual,  and  really  as  an  evidence  of  the  very 
spiritual  forces  themselves,  He  set  the  outward 
rites  of  Baptism  and  the  Holy  Communion.  He 


S4  SOME  FOUNDATION  TRUTHS 


appointed  the  Apostles  to  be  the  rulers  of  the 
Kingdom,  and  the  messengers  of  its  good  news; 
and  before  His  ascension  He  gave  a  final  com¬ 
mand  that  they  should  go  everywhere  and  make 
disciples  by  the  outward  sign  of  Baptism  and 
teach  them  to  live  the  spiritual  life  of  holiness 
and  love  which  He  had  been  teaching.  If  out¬ 
ward  expression  was  required,  still  more  was  the 
inner  spirit  necessary.  The  mere  accident  of  hu¬ 
man  birth  meant  nothing;  the  Jew  as  a  child  of 
Abraham  had  no  prerogatives.  God  could  make 
the  very  stones  such.  What  counted,  as  all  His 
miracles  wrought  on  men  showed,  was  faith  and 
humility.  To  build  up  this  Kingdom,  this  new 
rule  of  God,  not  over  the  outer  lives  but  in  the 
deepest  recesses  of  the  soul,  God’s  Son  came  into 
the  world,  and  as  its  king  He  died  upon  the  Cross 
so  that  men  might  be  won  to  accept  Him  and  it. 

This  central  teaching  of  the  Lord  was  not  for¬ 
gotten  by  the  Apostles  and  they,  not  unfre- 
quently  as  they  write,  especially  St.  Paul,  re¬ 
mind  the  Christians  of  the  spiritual  character  of 
the  Kingdom  which  the  latter  calls  the  ‘Kingdom 
of  the  Son  of  God’s  love.’  Under  it  all  there  lies 
the  single  principle  of  the  Rule  of  God.  Jesus 
Christ  came  to  do  His  Father’s  will,  and  when 
He  had  lived  His  life  He  declared  that  He  had 
fulfilled  it.  His  disciples  are  under  the  same 
regimen.  They,  as  members  of  His  kingdom, 
must  in  like  manner  do  His  Father’s  will. 
Bishop  Gore  describes  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven 
as  a  “realm  of  obedient  wills,”  and  we  read  of  it 


OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH 


85 


as  a  “community  in  which  God’s  will  is  fulfilled, 
a  religious  fellowship,  a  theocracy,  in  which  the 
people  who  were  God’s  would  be  living  the  life 
God  would  have  them  live  and  in  return  He 
would  ensure  their  place  in  His  Kingdom.” 

I  said  that  “Kingdom”  is  the  Lord’s  word 
and  “Church”  that  of  the  Apostles,  but  the  Mas* 
ter  Himself  set  them  the  example  and,  as  we  saw, 
the  word  Church  is  found  in  two  places  in  St. 
Matthew’s  Gospel.  Of  these  the  celebrated  and 
vitally  important  one  is  Chapter  16 : 18.  Im¬ 
mediately  after  St.  Peter’s  confession  our  Lord 
replied,  “Thou  art  Peter  and  upon  this  Rock  I 
will  build  my  church  and  the  gates  of  hell  shall 
not  prevail  against  it.”  We  are  only  interested 
in  the  single  sentence  “upon  this  rock  I  will 
build  my  church”  and  for  the  present  only  in  the 
last  part  of  it.  The  word  which  is  here  trans¬ 
lated  Church  is  in  the  Old  Testament  used  as  the 
equivalent  for  the  Hebrew  word  meaning  the 
Congregation  of  Israel,  not  as  a  people  or  nation 
but  as  the  holy  people  of  God.  They  are  ideally 
the  true  Israel.  Jesus  Christ  was  come  into  the 
world,  so  St.  Matthew  records  in  the  Sermon  on 
the  Mount,  to  bring  to  perfection  the  Law  and 
the  Prophets,  to  complete,  round  out  into  its  ful¬ 
ness  what  they  had  inaugurated.  But  in  the 
Law  and  the  Prophets  there  is  more  than  the  col¬ 
lection  of  the  precepts  of  morals  and  society  and 
religion  which  as  we  have  seen  underlie  the  idea 
of  the  Kingdom.  There  was  also  the  holy  peo¬ 
ple,  a  sacred  society,  Israel.  Now  our  Lord,  in 


86  SOME  FOUNDATION  TRUTHS 


fulfilling  the  Law  and  the  Prophets,  carried  out 
this  side  of  the  Old  Testament  revelation  as  well 
as  the  other.  He  built  up  a  new  Israel,  His  Con¬ 
gregation,  which  the  Apostle  calls  a  “chosen  gen¬ 
eration,  a  royal  priesthood,  a  holy  nation,  a  pur¬ 
chased  people,”  and  in  speaking  of  this  new  Is¬ 
rael  Jesus  Christ  uses  the  Greek  equivalent  of 
the  Old  Testament  word,  ecclesia  or  Church.  In 
the  other  passage,  St.  Matthew  18 : 17,  where  the 
word  occurs  twice,  it  refers  again  to  the  congre¬ 
gation  of  the  faithful. 

But  if  our  Lord  uses  the  expression  but  seldom 
there  is  no  doubt  of  the  frequency  of  the  apostolic 
usage.  The  word  appears  in  many  contexts  but 
almost  always  with  this  same  central  idea  of  the 
chosen  people.  Sometimes  it  is  the  Church  in  a 
particular  locality,  as  the  Church  in  some  one’s 
house,  or  in  some  town ;  once  it  is  the  Church  of 
Christ,  again  it  is  the  ‘Church  of  God  which  He 
purchased  with  His  own  Blood’  (or  the  Blood 
of  His  own  Son)  and  in  the  Ephesians  the 
Apostle  writes  with  a  wider  vision  and  sees  the 
chosen  people,  scattered  over  the  earth,  as  one 
single  nation,  and  uses  the  term  in  the  most 
general  way. 

Behind  this  use  of  language  lies  a  great  body 
of  fact  to  which  I  can  but  allude.  As  our  Lord 
stood  behind  the  apostolic  company  during  His 
life  on  earth  so  the  Apostles  stand  behind  the 
chosen  people  after  the  descent  of  the  Holy 
Ghost.  Nothing  happens  without  them,  and 
they  are  the  centers  of  life  under  every  condition. 


OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH 


87 


Arclibishop  Temple  puts  this  admirably  in  the 
volume  Twelve  Sermons  Preached  at  the  Conse¬ 
cration  of  Truro  Cathedral  quoted  by  Stone  in 
The  Christian  Church.  “The  Church  takes  its 
origin  not  in  the  will  of  man  but  in  the  will  of 
the  Lord  Jesus  Christ.  He  sent  forth  His  Apos¬ 
tles,  the  Apostles  received  their  commission  from 
Him.  .  .  .  They  came  first  and  the  members 
came  afterwards.”  One  gets  it  even  more  strik¬ 
ingly  in  Rackham’s  Introduction  to  his  Com¬ 
mentary  on  the  Acts,  where  he  traces  the  develop¬ 
ment  of  the  Church  as  given  in  Acts,  and  shows 
how  the  Apostles  were  the  very  center  of  every¬ 
thing. 

The  Christian  people,  this  New  Israel  which 
Jesus  Christ  built  upon  the  Rock  which  St.  Peter 
disclosed,  has  similar  characteristics  to  the  King¬ 
dom  which  our  Lord  preached.  Like  it  the 
Church  has  its  principles  of  conduct,  its  ideals  of 
life,  its  rites  and  ceremonies,  its  rulers  and 
guides,  and  all  these  in  the  Church  are  practic¬ 
ally  exactly  what  they  are  in  the  Kingdom  as 
preached  by  the  Lord  Himself.  The  thing  of  the 
Acts  and  the  Epistles  and  the  Revelation,  which 
men  called  the  Church  or  the  Church  in  special 
places,  is  the  same  thing  which  Jesus  Christ 
called  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  or  of  God  as  re¬ 
corded  in  the  Gospels.  But  why  the  change? 

One  cannot  but  recall  a  suggestion  of  Ram¬ 
say’s.  The  Apostles  went  forth  to  preach  and 
to  establish  the  Kingdom.  So  far  as  the  Acts 
and  Epistles  go  this  work  was  within  the  confines 


88  SOME  FOUNDATION  TRUTHS 


of  the  Roman  Empire.  From  what  we  know  of 
Roman  imperial  government  and  jealousy  of  its 
own  prerogatives  it  is  not  hard  to  imagine  what 
might  have  been  the  fate  of  the  Christian  Church 
in  its  infancy  if  the  Roman  imperial  authorities 
knew  of  it  as  the  developing  within  the  empire 
of  a  new  kingdom  whose  adherents  were  bound 
by  ties  which  were  stronger  than  those  of  the 
Empire  itself.  The  persecutions,  which  came 
with  terrific  force  two  centuries  later  in  their 
extremest  form  when  the  Church  was  strong 
enough  to  bear  them,  would  have  swept,  hu¬ 
manly  speaking,  from  among  men  the  few  evan¬ 
gelists  of  the  middle  of  the  first  century  and  the 
Gospel  message  would  have  died.  The  elect  peo¬ 
ple,  the  ecclesia,  did  not  arouse  this  antagonism 
and  by  the  time  that  the  Empire  woke  to  the 
question  the  danger  was  virtually  past.  The 
Church  of  the  Apostolic  age  is  the  same  thing  as 
the  Kingdom  in  the  days  when  they  were  but 
disciples  or  had  been  made  apostles  but  as  yet 
without  the  endowment  of  the  Spirit  which  made 
them  changed  men.  So  far  as  New  Testament 
usage  is  concerned  the  two  are  but  different 
names  for  the  one  thing. 

Within  recent  generations  men  have  come  to 
give  the  Gospel  phrase  a  larger,  wider  content 
than  they  give  to  the  word  Church  and  many  are 
thinking  of  the  Kingdom  of  God  as  the  great 
body  of  people  who  recognise  the  rule  of  God  and 
yet,  in  the  case  of  many  of  them,  never  come 
within  the  membership  of  the  people  of  God  or 


OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH 


89 


the  Church;  and  they  have  built  up  this  idea 
upon  an  interpretation  in  part  at  least  of  St. 
Paul’s  word  in  I  Corinthians  15 : 24,  “when  the 
Son  shall  have  delivered  up  the  Kingdom  to  the 
Father.”  We  must  be  on  our  guard  against  two 
possible  misconceptions;  (I)  that  there  is,  or 
can  be,  beneath  the  Church  as  it  is  seen  on  earth, 
desperately  rent  and  divided,  torn  asunder,  an 
invisible  Church  which  is  the  real  Ecclesia  of 
God.  There  is  no  possible  New  Testament  basis 
for  any  such  conception,  and  the  Lord’s  parables, 
as  St.  Augustine  showed  very  plainly  in  his  con¬ 
troversy  with  the  Donatists,  recognise  the  exist¬ 
ence  in  the  Kingdom  of  both  good  and  bad,  who 
will  remain,  until  the  end  of  the  world.  (II) 
And  in  addition  to  this  mistaken  conception 
there  is  a  second,  the  idea  that  the  Kingdom  is  a 
mere  congeries  or  composite  of  all  the  multitudes 
of  people  who  profess  a  faith  in  Jesus  Christ 
without  any  outward  mark  or  sign.  I  have  al¬ 
ready  said  enough  to  show  that  in  the  New  Testa¬ 
ment  both  Church  and  Kingdom  have  their  neces¬ 
sary  outward  marks.  There  is,  however,  a  twi¬ 
light  zone,  if  I  may  so  call  it,  into  which  the  light 
of  the  Gospel  shines,  but  where  it  does  not  fully 
penetrate;  where  its  influence  reaches  but  does 
not  become  supreme.  We  see  it  in  civilization, 
in  the  environment  of  Christendom  today.  We 
get  examples  of  it  in  the  so-called  civilizing  in¬ 
fluences  of  the  Church  as  seen  in  heathen  lands. 
There  is  then  a  sense  in  which  the  Kingdom  of 
God  is  bigger,  bigger  on  earth,  than  the  Chris- 


90  SOME  FOUNDATION  TEUTHS 


tian  Church  in  even  its  broadest  sense.  And  in 
this  interpretation  of  the  term,  the  Kingdom  of 
God  and  the  Church  are  not  the  same;  but  the 
Church  is  the  formal  medium  through  which  the 
Kingdom  is  being  established  and  men  won  to  it. 
As  Bishop  Anderson  put  it  once,  the  Church  is 
the  executive  agency  of  the  Kingdom  by  which 
it  is  spread  through  the  world.  This  does  not 
belittle  the  Church  nor  make  it  of  no  impor¬ 
tance,  rather  it  makes  its  importance  more 
marked  and  more  definite. 

IV 

When  we  turn  again  to  the  New  Testament  to 
study  the  Church  we  find  that  there  are  certain 
ideas  about  it  which  stand  out.  First  of  all  we 
are  struck  by  the  names  which  are  used  for  its 
members.  Three  of  them  are  notable  and  at  once 
suggest  special  relationships  to  God.  The  Chris¬ 
tians  were  called  brethren,  and  St.  Paul  empha¬ 
sized  that  they  are  children  of  God  through 
adoption  into  a  relationship  to  Plim  which  justi¬ 
fies  their  calling  Him  Father  and  calling  each 
other  brethren.  They  are  disciples,  those  who 
are  taught  by  Jesus  Christ  through  the  Apostles, 
who  in  this  way  are  fulfilling  the  Master’s  com¬ 
mand  not  only  to  make  disciples  but  to  teach 
them,  and  they  are  thus  learners  at  the  school  of 
God’s  Incarnate  Son.  But  in  the  Epistles,  es¬ 
pecially  those  of  St.  Paul,  though  he  is  not  alone 
in  this  usage,  another  and  strange  expression  ap- 


OF  THE  CHKISTIAN  FAITH 


91 


pears,  one  that  has  come  to  have  a  special  mean¬ 
ing  quite  restricted  from  the  broad  use  of  the 
Apostles.  I  mean  the  word  Saint,  which  at  once 
suggests  not  only  the  ideal  of  a  holy  life  but  the 
indwelling  power  of  the  Holy  Spirit  through 
whom  this  life  is  possible.  Bishop  Matthews, 
from  whom  I  have  taken  this  illustration,  points 
out  that  these  three  words  imply  a  belief  in  the 
Christian  of  the  New  Testament  days  in  the 
Father  and  the  Son  and  the  Holy  Ghost,  and  so 
are  an  indirect  evidence  but  one  none  the  less 
positive  to  the  teaching  of  the  Trinity.  There  is 
a  fourth  word  which  emphasizes  the  part  which 
God  Himself  plays  in  the  Church.  Jesus  Christ 
called  men  to  Him;  He  chose  whom  He  would; 
He  appointed  men  of  his  choice.  St.  Peter  rec¬ 
ognised  these  things  when  he  began  his  descrip¬ 
tion  with  the  words  a  “Chosen  generation.” 
This  activity  on  God’s  part  in  putting  us  into 
the  Kingdom  is  expressed  in  the  word  Elect  or 
Chosen  Ones. 

Over  against  this  moving  on  God’s  part  is  the 
surrender  of  men  of  their  own  will  to  His  call, 
which  we  describe  by  the  word  Faith,  and  Faith 
is  just  as  important  an  element  in  the  life  of  the 
Church  as  it  was  in  the  growth  of  the  Kingdom 
as  recorded  in  the  Gospels. 

In  the  Epistle  to  the  Ephesians  St.  Paul  uses 
a  figure  which  no  study  of  the  Church  in  the 
New  Testament  can  omit.  I  speak  to  my  friend 
and  he  hears  what  I  say.  How  is  it  possible? 


92  SOME  FOUNDATION  TRUTHS 


It  is  because  he  and  I  have  bodies.  So  far  as 
we  know  there  is  no  possibility  of  men  reaching 
each  other,  certainly  with  any  confident  assur¬ 
ance  of  the  facts,  unless  they  have  bodies*  My 
body,  his  body,  this  is  that  through  which  I  make 
myself  known  to  him  and  he  to  me.  St.  Paul  in 
speaking  of  the  Church  describes  it  as  the  Body 
of  Christ.  What  does  he  mean?  Is  it  now,  in 
part  at  least,  the  outward  and  visible  form 
through  which  Jesus  Christ  makes  Himself 
known  to  the  world,  reaches  the  world,  touches 
men  in  the  world  and  by  which  they  reach  and 
touch  and  know  Him?  It  is  the  medium  of 
knowledge  and  contact  and  power.  Apart  from 
the  Church,  knowledge  of  Jesus  Christ  would  be 
impossible.  Some  may  not  agree  with  me  per¬ 
haps,  and  may  say  that  I  am  exaggerating  the 
facts,  that  they  could  get  this  knowledge  through 
the  New  Testament.  But  we  must  realize  and 
remember,  that  the  New  Testament  comes  to  us 
through  the  Church.  It  is  true  that  in  this  year 
1923  we  could  get  the  New  Testament  without  the 
Church,  or  at  any  rate  without  any  consciousness 
in  us  of  the  Church’s  part  in  the  matter;  we  can 
go  to  a  store  and  buy  it;  but  let  us  not  forget 
that  behind  this  printed  book  there  lies  the  fact, 
a  fact  which  cannot  be  denied,  that  the  New  Tes¬ 
tament  was  written  by  members  of  the  Church  to 
members  of  the  Qhurch  and  preserved  by  them 
and  others  in  after  generations  who  in  turn  were 
members  of  the  Church.  In  fact  the  very  evi¬ 
dence,  the  only  evidence  we  have  of  Jesus  Christ 


OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH 


93 


is  through  His  Body  the  Church.  We  experi¬ 
ence,  through  contact  within  our  own  souls,  we 
know  Him  in  ourselves,  but  we  get  even  that  ex¬ 
perience  through  the  Church.  It  is  for  this  rea¬ 
son  that  St.  Paul  says  the  Church  is  the  Body  of 
Christ,  that  through  which  we  know  Him  and  He 
reaches  us. 

And  this  explains  why  St.  Paul  calls  us  His 
members  or  says  we  are  “In  Christ”  and  speaks 
of  us  as  those  in  whom  His  Spirit  dwells  who 
live  by  the  power  of  that  Spirit.  We  are  “mem¬ 
bers  of  His  Body.” 


v 

I  cannot  close  this  chapter  without  calling  at¬ 
tention  to  the  fact  that  the  Church  is  marked,  in 
the  Creed  by  the  four  traditional  characteristics. 
We  profess  our  belief  that  the  Church  is  One, 
Holy,  Catholic  and  Apostolic;  and  we  look  out 
into  Christendom  and  find  that,  as  men  see  it, 
the  Church  seems  to  be  none  of  these  things. 
She  is  cleft  and  split  asunder  into  warring, 
jangling  sects  who  far  from  ancient  love,  too 
often  are  antagonistic  to  each  other  if  they  do  not 
hate  one  another.  She  is  the  scorn  of  men  for 
her  worldliness,  the  selfishness  and  low  moral 
tone  of  her  people,  and  has  been  for  centuries. 
If  by  Catholic  we  mean  universal  she,  in  her  wid¬ 
est  inclusion,  only  reaches  a  part  of  the  Chris¬ 
tian  nations  and  leaves  untouched  countless  mil¬ 
lions  of  people  beyond  them ;  and  if  we  mean  or- 


94  SOME  FOUNDATION  TRUTHS 


thodox  the  vagaries  of  belief  are  as  many  as  the 
teachers  or  almost  as  many  as  the  believers. 
While  last  of  all,  if  we  proclaim  her  Apostolic 
we  will  be  laughed  at  by  many  of  our  fel¬ 
lows  who  care  not  the  snap  of  their  finger  what 
the  Apostolic  customs  and  practises  were  and 
but  little  about  the  Apostles’  teachings.  What 
answer  can  we  make  to  these  objections?  Must 
we  not  say,  in  common  honesty,  that  the  out¬ 
ward  unity  of  the  Church,  so  far  as  it  is  here  on 
earth,  is  lost?  And  yet,  down  beneath  there  is  a 
real  unity  of  belief  in  Jesus  Christ,  a  real  ac¬ 
ceptance  of  Him  as  Lord  and  Saviour,  a  real 
living  union  with  Him  through  the  common 
birth  of  Holy  Baptism.  It  is  true  that  this  will 
not  include  all  who  profess  and  cal]  themselves 
Christians,  but  none  the  less  there  is  a  real 
unity  of  belief  and  practise  which  exists  even 
when  not  always  visible;  and  further  there  is  a 
union  such  as  we  read  of  in  the  extract  from 
Niceta  in  the  last  chapter,  between  us  and  the 
hosts  who  have  gone  before. 

The  Holiness  of  the  Church  has  always  been 
recognised  not  as  a  thing  which  has  no  flaws,  no 
imperfections;  not  even,  in  one  sense  at  least, 
as  a  matter  of  life  alone;  but  as  the  outcome  of 
the  indwelling  of  the  Holy  Spirit  Who  makes  men 
able  to  live  a  holy  life  and  leads  them  on  from 
less  to  more ;  while  again  the  countless  holy  ones 
who  have  laid  down  their  lives  are  an  unseen  but 
none  the  less  real  witness  to  the  holiness  of  the 
Church. 


OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH 


95 


One  of  the  oldest  descriptions  of  the  Church  is 
that  she  is  Catholic.  I  stated  when  discussing 
the  Creed  that  this  term  originally  meant  “for 
all”  or  universal  and  this  meaning  has  come  to 
the  front  again  in  later  days.  In  the  centuries 
between  there  was  the  narrower  sense  of  ortho¬ 
doxy  of  belief.  It  is  quite  probable  that  the 
term  as  used  in  the  Creed  does  not  mean  univer¬ 
sal  so  much  as  orthodox,  and  that  properly 
speaking  the  Church  is  called  Catholic  because 
she  holds  fast  the  Faith  as  it  has  been  delivered. 
It  is  impossible,  however,  in  these  days  to  ignore 
the  earlier  meaning  and  we  must  face  the  ques¬ 
tion  in  what  degree  can  the  Church  be  spoken  of 
as  “for  all.”  Experience  in  Christian  missions 
is  the  answer  to  this  turn  of  the  question.  No 
race,  no  people,  no  age,  neither  sex,  fails  to  find 
in  her  the  satisfaction  of  the  souks  need. 
Wherever  the  Gospel  has  been  carried  there  she 
has  brought  to  the  people  to  whom  she  ministers 
something  which  their  soul  craved  and  apart 
from  her  could  not  get  and  had  not  found.  She 
is  trulv  Catholic  in  this  sense,  For  all.  And  as 
the  catholic  character  of  her  message  explains 
its  welcome  so  too  it  explains  the  going  on  the 
errand  of  teaching.  It  is  because  she  feels  that 
she  has  from  her  Lord  this  truth,  these  gifts 
which  the  world  needs,  that  she  reaches  out  and 
seeks  to  compass  the  world  with  the  triumph  of 
the  Cross.  It  is  the  secret  of  her  missionary  ac¬ 
tivity  and  of  her  zeal  for  souls.  And  within  this 
same  word  lies  her  close  grip  upon  the  deposit, 


96  SOME  FOUNDATION  TKUTHS 


that  Faith  once  for  all  delivered,  which  we  seek 
to  understand  ourselves  and  to  hand  on  unim¬ 
paired  to  the  generations  to  come. 

Last  of  all  there  is  a  real  recognition  that  the 
life  of  the  Church  goes  back  to  the  Apostles,  that 
they  are  the  guardians  of  the  faith  and  of  the 
message  and  of  the  sacraments  by  which  the 
life  is  assured.  The  Church  is  not  some  new 
organization  whose  beginnings  are  of  recent 
days.  Hers  is  no  mushroom  growth  springing 
up  of  a  night,  nor  like  the  gourd  which  sheltered 
Jonah  has  she  suddenly  spread  abroad.  Her 
growth  has  been  a  long  one,  and  her  life  reaches 
back  across  the  centuries.  In  the  beginnings, 
when  the  twelve  men  whom  Jesus  Christ  Him¬ 
self  had  called  to  be  Apostles  had  won  their 
first  converts,  we  read  that  the  disciples  con¬ 
tinued  in  the  Apostles  doctrine  and  fellowship, 
in  the  breaking  of  the  bread  and  the  prayers. 
The  Church  in  those  days  was  apostolic  not  only 
because  of  the  presence  of  the  Apostle  among 
them  but  because  of  this  continuity.  The  same 
character  must  mark  her  today  if  she  is  to  keep 
her  right  to  this  name.  It  was  not  added  as  a 
Note  of  the  Church  just  for  a  name.  It  was 
rather  a  distinction  by  which  men  might  know 
among  the  warring  groups  of  Christians  those 
who  had  the  truth  and  the  grace  which  the  Mas¬ 
ter  came  to  give,  by  the  fact  that  they  reached 
back  in  a  continuous  history  to  the  Apostles. 
It  would  be  impossible  at  this  time  to  point  out 
in  detail  our  own  claim  to  this  heritage.  But 


OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH 


97 


we  must  not  forget  nor  allow  ourselves  to  be¬ 
little  the  fact  that  our  own  beloved  Church  does 
reach  back  along  the  lines  well  known  and  defin¬ 
itely  recognised  to  the  days  of  the  Apostles.  In 
broadest  terms  these  are  that  we  owe  our  life 
as  a  part  of  the  Church  Universal  to  our  mother 
in  England,  whose  history  goes  back  unbroken 
into  the  second  century.  That  she  in  turn  de¬ 
rived  her  Christian  life  from  the  Church  in  Gaul, 
from  whom  in  later  years  she  again  received  a 
new  infusion  of  strength.  The  ancient  Gallic 
Church  is  one  of  the  early  outgrowths  of  second 
century  missionary  activity.  Its  martyrs  meet 
us  in  the  pages  of  the  mid-second  century  and 
the  story  of  its  conversion  carries  us  back  al¬ 
most  to  the  days  when  St.  Paul  and  St.  Peter 
were  in  Rome.  We  are  quite  confident  that 
the  impulse  which  carried  the  message  to  Spain, 
did  not  leave  the  other  province  un-taught.  The 
line  runs  back  over  great  reaches  of  time  to 
the  days  of  the  Apostles.  Our  mother  has 
handed  us  no  stone  as  we  have  sought  at  her 
hands  the  bread  of  life.  Her  heritage  is  ours 
and  with  her  we  reach  across  the  ages  to  that 
Apostolic  origin  which  won  for  the  Church  in 
earlier  days  this  note,  Apostolic.  It  is  to  be 
noted  that  this  historic  continuity  is  closely 
bound  up  with  the  question  of  Orders.  The 
succession  within  the  Church  is  a  succession 
which  finds  as  its  links  the  bishops.  They  are 
in  the  Church,  they  are  not  the  Church ;  but  as 
in  the  earliest  days  the  Apostles  were  the  links 


98  SOME  FOUNDATION  TRUTHS 


with  the  Lord  Jesus  carrying  on  what  He  gave 
and  handing  it  on  to  others,  so  in  later  days 
the  bishops  in  turn  were  the  similar  links  hand¬ 
ing  on  what  they  received  and  assuring  to  the 
coming  generation  the  possession  of  those  things 
which  the  Apostles  themselves  received  from  our 
Lord.  This  explains  the  importance  of  the 
Apostolic  lineage  of  the  ministry,  and  justifies 
us  in  our  insistence  on  the  one  hand  that  our  own 
orders  have  this  inheritance  and  on  the  other 
that  this  inheritance  is  essential  not  only  to 
the  well  being  but  to  the  very  being  of  the  Church 
itself. 

Bishop  Johnson  of  Colorado  expressed  this  on 
one  occasion  when  he  pointed  out  that  the 
Church  is  marked  after  all  by  two  great  facts 
of  her  life.  On  the  one  hand  there  is  Continuity 
which  shows  us  her  life  in  one  unbroken  sweep 
from  the  Apostles  to  the  present.  The  golden 
thread  as  it  were  which  ties  us  to  them  in  this 
long  unbroken  reach,  which  touches  hand  to 
hand  through  nearly  sixty  generations,  is  the 
line  of  those  on  whose  heads  have  been  laid  the 
hands  of  those  who  were  in  their  several  gen¬ 
erations  the  shepherds  and  bishops  of  the  soul. 
And  as  Continuity  is  the  one  mark  so  Unity  is 
the  other.  And  the  Unity  of  which  Bishop 
Johnson  spoke  is  the  unity  in  the  Sacrament 
of  the  Altar,  where  through  those  same  sixty 
generations  countless  millions  of  faithful  souls 
have  knelt  week  after  week  and  received  from 
the  hand  of  the  priest  the  mysterious  food  of 


OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH 


99 


the  Body  and  Blood  of  Christ  and  have  been  thus 
made  one  in  Him  and  He  in  them  as  they  were 
partakers  of  the  one  Loaf  and  drank  of  the  one 
Cup  of  the  Blood  of  the  Saviour.  Outward 
unity  may  seem  broken,  many  may  profess  and 
call  themselves  Christians,  but  deep  within  is 
that  inner  unity  of  the  Water  and  the  Blood 
which  none  can  break;  for  the  Gates  of  Hell 
shall  not  prevail  against  the  Church  which  Jesus 
Christ  Himself  built,  and  into  which  men  are 
called.  “They  do  not  make  the  Church  by  com¬ 
ing.  They  are  called  into  that  which  already 
exists;  they  are  recognised  as  members  when 
they  are  within;  but  their  membership  depends 
upon  their  admission,  and  not  upon  their  con¬ 
stituting  themselves  into  a  body  in  the  sight  of 
the  Lord.”  It  is  this  idea  of  the  Church  which 
we  inherit  and  in  which  we  believe  and  because 
the  portion  of  the  Church  in  which  we  have  our 
part  has  this  continuity  and  life  we  are  sure 
that  we  are  partakers  of  the  grace  and  believers 
in  the  truth  which  the  Lord  Himself  gave  to  the 
world  through  his  Apostles. 


CHAPTER  V 


THE  SACRAMENTAL  SYSTEM 

We  now  come  to  the  discussion  of  the  topic 
which  goes  to  the  root  of  the  difference  between 
Catholic  and  Protestant,  the  Sacramental  sys¬ 
tem.  Every  one  of  us  recognises  that  there  are, 
today,  as  there  have  been  for  four  centuries, 
two  types  of  Christians;  and  that  they  belong, 
broadly  speaking,  to  the  two  groups  which  we 
call  Catholic  and  Protestant.  Both  profess  to 
believe  in  Jesus  Christ  as  God,  both  believe  that 
men  must  live  a  godly  life  to  attain  happiness, 
and  that  Jesus  Christ  helps  men  to  do  this. 
But  the  question  at  issue  between  them  is  how 
this  is  done. 

At  the  forefront  of  our  discussion  we  must 
look  for  just  a  moment  at  the  common  Protes¬ 
tant  idea  that  Christianity  is  a  religion  of  a 
Book.  In  a  certain  very  real  sense  this  is  true 
of  the  Protestant  conception  of  it.  But  it  is 
not  true  of  Christianity  itself.  It  cannot  be 
true,  for  Christianity  had  from  thirty  to  sixty 
years  of  active  life  behind  it  before  a  word  of 
the  New  Testament  was  written,  and  at  least  a 
century  had  passed  before  these  several  writings 
were  brought  together  to  form  the  collection 


OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH  101 


which  we  call  the  New  Testament.  That  cen¬ 
tury  saw  the  spread  of  the  Christian  Faith  from 
Jerusalem  to  Spain,  into  Egypt  and  Arabia,  and 
quite  probably  into  eastern  lands  of  which  we 
have  no  record.  Christianity  is  a  religion  with 
a  Book,  and  in  this  it  is  like  all  other  great 
religions ;  but  it  is  not  founded  upon  that  Book. 

We  find  that  men  believe  that  Jesus  Christ 
helps  them  to  live  the  life  which  He  revealed  in 
His  own  life  and  teaching,  but  the  Protestant 
believes  that  this  is  done  by  the  inspiration  of 
example,  by  the  incentive  of  a  hope  of  heaven, 
by  some  mysterious  power  of  the  Holy  Spirit  ; 
while  the  Catholic  Church  tells  us  that  the  help 
which  Jesus  Christ  gives  comes  to  men  through 
sacraments  and  makes  the  sacramental  life  the 
heart  and  soul  of  her  teaching  and  practise. 
To  her  these  sacraments  are  outward  visible 
signs  not  to  warm  the  heart  and  quicken  the 
will  and  arouse  the  imagination,  but  means  and 
pledges  by  which  men  actually  receive  from  our 
Lord  a  divine  gift  of  help  and  strength.  This 
Catholic  belief  the  Protestant  does  not  accept 
and  often  absolutely  denies  and  bitterly  opposes. 

There  is  a  third  distinction  between  these  two 
types  of  Christians  which  is  of  great  importance 
in  the  light  of  modern  teaching.  In  all  the  ages 
of  the  Church  St.  John’s  words  have  described 
her  belief  about  our  Lord  as  the  one  who  tells 
us  about  God.  “No  one,”  says  the  Apostle,  “has 
ever  seen  God  at  any  time,  the  only  begotten 
Son  who  is  in  the  bosom  of  the  Father  he  hath 


102  SOME  FOUNDATION  TRUTHS 


declared  him.”  Christianity  has  always  until 
recent  years  taught  us  that  it  is  a  religion  based 
upon  a  revelation  of  God  in  His  incarnate  Son, 
and  that  when  He  revealed  truth  He  gave  us 
what  we  could  not  find  out  for  ourselves.  Mod¬ 
ern  Protestantism,  under  the  influence  no  doubt 
of  that  line  of  teaching  which  Huxley  put  into 
its  philosophical  forms  and  to  which  he  gave 
the  name  Evolution,  has  come  to  accept  pretty 
broadly  the  belief  that  man  has  been  working  out 
through  the  ages  the  problem  of  religion  and  that 
Christianity  represents  the  development,  many 
would  say  the  highest  development,  of  that  proc¬ 
ess.  “Man  has  ‘by  searching  found  out  God/  ” 
and  since  the  first  century  men,  under  the  in¬ 
spiration  of  the  teaching  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth, 
have  come  not  only  to  an  increasingly  clearer 
knowledge  of  what  is  true,  but  to  knowledge  of 
new  truth  about  God.  We  are  not  surprised 
then  to  find  that  the  interest  of  the  more  ad¬ 
vanced  thinkers  of  Protestantism  dwells  more  on 
what  Jesus  Christ  said  than  on  what  He  did, 
and  that  they  are  concerned  with  the  signifi¬ 
cance,  in  the  solution  of  the  philosophical  prob¬ 
lems  of  the  universe,  of  His  teaching  rather 
than  of  His  actions.  To  the  Catholic  the  es¬ 
sential  problem  is  not  this  philosophical  specu¬ 
lation,  though  the  true  Catholic  is  not  indifferent 
to  the  solution  of  these  great  questions,  but  the 
significance  in  life,  both  for  mankind  as  a  whole 
and  for  the  individual,  of  God’s  love  as  revealed 
in  the  facts  of  Christ’s  birth  and  death,  His 


OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH  103 


resurrection  and  ascension.  He  is  interested  in 
knowing  primarily  who  Jesus  of  Nazareth  is 
and  what  He  did  far  more  than  in  the  contribu¬ 
tion  He  made  to  the  solution  of  the  riddle  of  the 
universe.  This  does  not  mean  that  our  Lord 
did  not  give  any  key  to  that  riddle,  nor  that  this 
key  is  a  matter  of  indifference,  but  that  the  great 
practical  issue  for  men  is  how  to  live  as  He 
taught  men  to  live  and  through  Him  to  come 
into  a  living  fellowship  with  God.  Christian¬ 
ity,  as  the  Church  sees  it,  is  a  religion  which 
not  only  tells  us  about  God  and  life  by  reach¬ 
ing  back  to  Christ,  but  also  and  in  a  very  real 
sense  brings  Christ  to  us;  and  the  method  by 
which  we  come  to  Him  and  He  to  us,  in  a  vital 
personal  union,  is  that  which  is  called  the  Sacra¬ 
mental  System.  Because  we  have  kept  this 
truth  clearly  enshrined  in  our  Prayer  Book  and 
made  it  an  essential  thing  in  our  religious  life 
we  dare  to  say,  in  spite  of  our  divisions  and  fail¬ 
ures,  that  we  are  a  part  of  the  Catholic  Church. 
We  may  be,  as  Bishop  Anderson  said :  “A 
Catholic  Church  in  a  Protestant  atmosphere” ; 
we  may  seem  to  men  to  be  aligned  with  Protes¬ 
tant  Christianity  rather  than  Catholic  because 
of  our  separation  from  Rome;  and  some  may 
think  that  we  are  actually  only  one  of  the 
Protestant  bodies  as  men  call  us  and  we  unfor¬ 
tunately  proclaim  upon  the  title  page  of  the 
Prayer  Book ;  but  so  long  as  we  keep  the  Sacra¬ 
mental  System  in  its  present  place  in  our  life  and 
teaching  we  are  truly  Catholic  in  that  great  es- 


104  SOME  FOUNDATION  TRUTHS 


sential  matter  which  separates  the  two  great 
divisions  of  Western  Christendom. 

I 

The  Sacramental  idea  is  not  peculiarly  a  reli¬ 
gious  idea  in  principle.  It  underlies  every  part 
of  our  life.  We  all  recognise  the  existence  of 
two  worlds,  of  which  we  are  a  part,  the  world 
of  material  things  and  the  world  of  spirit.  I 
look  out  across  the  hills  upon  a  wonderful  vista 
of  mountains ;  they  rise  roll  upon  roll  until  their 
tops  meet  the  heavens.  Night  comes  on  and  her 
purpling  shadows  fill  the  hollows  and  the  val¬ 
leys  lie  in  darkness.  Soon  out  of  the  deep  blue 
of  the  skies  the  stars  begin  to  show  and  as  night 
goes  on  the  heavens  become  a  mass  of  twinkling 
points  of  light.  I  know  that  all  this  is  but  the 
material  universe,  rock  and  earth  and  tree  and 
the  molten  suns  whose  far  off  light  can  only 
reach  my  eyes  when  our  own  sun  is  hid  behind 
this  earth.  But  that  scene  is  more  to  me  than 
a  material  thing.  “The  heavens  declare  the 
glory  of  God  and  the  firmament  showeth  His 
handiwork.”  That  mysterious  beauty  of  the 
starlit  night  arouses  in  me  deep  longings,  a  sense 
of  awe  and  wonder,  and  somehow  I  feel  my¬ 
self  in  the  presence  of  God.  The  outward  visible 
beauty  has  spoken  to  me  of  an  invisible  Being 
whom  I  cannot  see.  So  too,  when,  perhaps,  I 
sit  in  the  quiet  stillness  of  an  evening  and  reach 
out  and  touch  my  child’s  hand,  I  feel  not  only 


OF  THE  CHKISTIAN  FAITH  105 


flesh  and  blood,  mere  material  things,  but  there 
is  a  subtle  indescribable  feeling,  which  we  have 
all  in  one  way  or  another  experienced,  that  is 
the  touch  not  of  hand  and  hand  but  of  heart  and 
heart,  of  soul  and  soul.  We  know  nothing  save 
as  we  learn  it  through  outward  signs  and  sym¬ 
bols.  We  cannot  express  our  inner  life  save  by 
some  bodily  action,  and  there  have  been,  there 
are  today,  teachers  who  go  so  far  as  to  tell 
us  that  this  outer  life  is  the  only  real  life  and 
that  there  is  no  inner  life,  but  that  what  we 
call  the  inner  is  but  the  reactions  of  our 
neurons  and  the  sensations  of  our  physical 
being. 

The  inward  reaches  us  through  the  outward 
not  only  in  our  personal  intercourse  but  in  the 
larger  experience  of  life.  We  know  innumer¬ 
able  instances  of  it;  our  Flag,  our  Money,  our 
Newspapers,  the  Courtesies  of  society,  are  but 
examples  chosen  haphazard,  of  the  truth  that  in 
every  avenue  of  life  we  express  the  inward  re¬ 
alities,  the  things  that  count,  by  some  outward 
symbol  which  has  no  value  in  itself  but  finds  its 
value  because  of  the  fact  that  it  stands  for  some¬ 
thing  which  has  real  worth.  This  expression 
of  the  inward  through  the  outward  is  a  common 
place  of  human  life,  true  absolutely  indepen¬ 
dently  of  religion,  but  it  is  none  the  less  true  in 
the  religious  sphere  because  it  is  true  outside 
that  sphere;  and  the  principle  which  is  thus  ex¬ 
pressed  is  the  principle  which  lies  beneath  the 
Sacramental  System.  God,  willing  to  give  us 


106  SOME  FOUNDATION  TRUTHS 


help,  gives  it  to  ns  by  outward  signs  which  are 
both  vehicles  and  evidence  of  His  grace. 

ii 

When  God  determined  to  give  man  a  new  start 
and  to  open  to  him  vistas  of  hope  fulfilled  and 
of  life  restored;  to  take  away  the  cloud  which 
had  hid  Him  from  man’s  eyes;  and  to  open  the 
gate  by  which  man  could  enter  once  more  into 
fellowship  with  his  Father  in  Heaven ;  God  made 
use  of  this  universal  prniciple.  He  sent  His  Son 
into  the  world.  But  how?  In  the  only  way  by 
which  men  could  see  Him,  under  outward  form. 
He  was  made  man.  The  great  sacrament,  the 
most  wonderful  outward  and  visible  form  of  an 
inward  and  spiritual  grace,  is  the  Incarnation 
itselL  God,  who  is  pure  spirit  and  as  such  in¬ 
visible  to  our  physical  sight,  took  form  so  that 
men  might  see  Him;  and  the  form  He  took  was 
the  form  of  man,  not  that  it  was  only  so  that 
men  might  see  Him,  but  that  it  was  so  that  He 
could  best  reach  us ;  and  further  as  one  of  us,  ac¬ 
complish  the  purposes  of  Redemption.  “God 
was  manifested  in  the  flesh,”  is  St.  Paul’s  way 
of  stating  it;  God  “tabernacles  with  us,”  is  St. 
John’s  expression,  “He  dwelt  among  us”  in  out¬ 
ward  visible  form.  We  must  remember  that  it 
was  in  this  material  form  that  He  did  things 
for  men.  He  touched  them  and  they  saw  and 
heard  and  at  His  word  walked  and  were  cleansed, 
they  who  had  been  blind  and  deaf,  lame  and 


OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH  107 


leprous.  His  voice  bade  the  paralyzed  arise  and 
take  up  bis  bed  and  gave  him  strength  to  do 
this  otherwise  impossible  thing.  The  woman 
touched  the  border  of  His  garment,  and  the 
misery  of  half  her  life  departed  but  strength 
went  out  from  Him.  The  Lord  Jesus  accom¬ 
plished  things  with  men  because  as  God  incar¬ 
nate  He  actually  touched  them,  touched  not  only 
their  hearts  by  his  love  and  sympathy  but  their 
bodies  by  His  own  body. 

Did  His  touch  stop  when  He  ascended?  Was 
it  by  a  derived  power,  without  actual  contact 
with  the  Master  that  the  apostles  wrought?  And 
if  their  miracles — for  St.  Luke  tells  us  they 
worked  miracles — were  by  such  delegated  power, 
was  there  no  other  power  such  as  touched  their 
souls,  that  came  from  contact  with  Him  and 
made  them  strong  against  the  power  of  evil? 
St.  John  uses  a  word  in  the  record  of  our  Lord’s 
great  discourses  on  the  night  in  which  He  was 
betrayed  that  is  very  suggestive.  Our  Lord  was 
telling  the  Apostles  of  their  personal  dependence 
upon  and  their  relationship  to  Him,  and  to  make 
it  clear  He  used  the  figure  of  the  Vine  and  the 
Branches.  The  life  is  in  the  Vine,  the  fruit  we 
know  is  borne  upon  the  branches  through  the 
life  which  is  in  the  vine.  He  says;  “Without 
Me  ye  can  do  nothing,”  or  to  translate  the  Greek 
proposition  still  more  literally  “apart  from  Me,” 
“separated  from  Me,”  ye  can  do  nothing.  Their 
power  came  from  union,  vital  union  with  Him. 
In  view  of  this  statement  of  our  Lord  it  is  very 


108  SOME  FOUNDATION  TRUTHS 


significant  that  St.  Paul’s  phrase  of  the  relation¬ 
ship  between  the  Christian  and  the  Lord  is  “in 
Him.”  We  are  united  to  Him,  we  are  in  Him. 

What  is  this  union  and  how  can  we  get  it? 
Let  me  remind  you  just  by  reference  of  the  figure 
which  the  Apostle  used  when  he  called  the 
Church  the  Body  of  Christ  and  with  this  re¬ 
mind  you  of  that  other  expression  in  the  Epistle 
to  the  Romans  where  he  speaks  of  us  as  members 
of  each  other  in  the  body  and  so  interdependent. 
Our  union  with  Christ  is  the  union  with  Him 
through  membership  in  His  body.  This  member¬ 
ship  is  not  belonging  to  a  society.  St.  Paul  was 
no  modern  sectary.  He  had  no  conception  of 
the  Church  as  a  company  of  believers,  who  by 
virtue  of  their  common  belief  and  admission  into 
the  company,  form  a  society.  They  were  in 
Christ,  members  of  His  Body,  and  because  of 
this  they  were  members  not  only  of  the  Body  but 
“one  of  another.” 

Membership  in  the  Body  of  Christ  implies,  yes 
it  involves,  life  which  is  from  Him.  As  He  Him¬ 
self  told  Nicodemus  men  enter  into  the  King¬ 
dom,  i.  e.  to  use  the  Apostle’s  phrase  His  Body, 
by  birth  and  the  birth  is  spiritual  because  His 
Body  is  spiritual.  It  could  have  been  no  other 
sort  of  birth  because  of  this  fact  of  the  spiritu¬ 
ality  of  the  Body.  But  it  was  not  some  invisible 
birth,  because  again  the  Body  while  spiritual 
was  visible  under  its  outward  form  of  the  mem¬ 
bers  of  the  Church.  The  birth  into  the  Body 
was  of  necessity  by  some  outward  form.  It  is 


OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH  109 


however  most  important  at  this  point  to  in¬ 
sist  that  it  is  a  real  birth  with  all  that  birth  in¬ 
volves  of  the  entering  into  a  new  relationship. 
Let  us  not  forget  that  this  is  in  reality  the  whole 
of  what  we  call  birth.  The  child  is  by  birth  en¬ 
tering  a  new  relationship  with  the  world  and 
his  family.  He  is  what  he  was  before,  but  not 
under  former  conditions  and  so  we  say  he  begins 
to  live  a  new  life.  It  is  exactly  this  that  comes 
in  the  spiritual  birth,  by  which  we  enter  the 
Body  of  Christ.  We  enter  a  new  relationship 
both  to  Him  and  to  our  fellows,  and  as  such  we 
enter  into  a  new  life.  The  relationship  is  pri¬ 
marily  with  God  through  Jesus  Christ.  We 
are  made  members  of  Christ  and  because  of  that 
we  become,  in  a  sense  in  which  we  were  not  be¬ 
fore,  the  children  of  God,  and  we  enter  into  the 
privileges  of  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven.  Baptism 
incorporates  us  into  Christ’s  Body,  makes  us 
members  of  Him,  gives  us  new  life,  as  we  are 
grafted  as  branches  into  the  Vine. 

This  is  the  meaning  of  the  old  phrase  “The 
sacraments  are  the  extension  of  the  Incarnation.” 
They  are  means  of  applying  the  Incarnate  Christ 
to  men,  by  which  means  He  actually  touches 
them  under  outward  form;  and  the  signs  which 
are  pledges  of  the  reality  beneath.  And  this 
union  with  Himself  is  what  Jesus  Christ  wanted 
to  secure  to  men. 

We  shall  not  enter  now  upon  the  discussion  of 
the  number  of  the  sacraments.  This  depends 
upon  the  exact  meaning  of  the  word.  If  it  be 


110  SOME  FOUNDATION  TRUTHS 


“ordained  by  Christ  Himself”  the  answer  is  one 
thing;  if  it  be  “an  outward  and  visible  sign  of 
an  inward  and  spiritual  grace”  the  answer  may 
well  be  another.  But  there  are  three  aspects  of 
life  which  must  have  expression,  and  as  mem¬ 
bers  of  a  living  Body  we  must  expect  to  find 
them  in  the  experience  of  those  in  the  Body.  If 
we  are  to  have  real  life  in  the  body  there  must 
be  not  only  birth  into  it,  but  food  and  power. 

I  have  already  said  enough  of  that  Sacrament 
which  is  the  beginning  of  Christian  life  in  the 
soul,  Holy  Baptism.  This  must  come  first. 
There  can  be  no  union  with  our  Lord,  no  contact 
with  Him,  no  normal  giving  of  strength  until 
this  is  accomplished.  I  am  willing  to  admit, 
in  theory,  that  God  is  not  bound  by  sacraments 
and  that  He  can,  if  He  will,  give  spiritual 
strength  without  them;  but  it  is  absolutely  ab¬ 
normal  and  exceptional,  and  we  have  no  right 
whatever,  no  slightest  ground,  for  believing  that 
He  will  make  us  the  exception  and  give  us  grace 
unless  we  belong  to  His  Body.  Our  Lord  Him¬ 
self  has  put  this  truth  so  plainly  that  one  should 
think  there  was  no  room  for  discussion,  but 
none  the  less  in  spite  of  His  plainness  of  speech 
men  rebel  against  the  teaching,  and  yet  there 
the  words  stand ;  “Except  a  man  be  born  of  water 
and  the  spirit  he  cannot  enter  into  the  Kingdom 
of  Heaven.”  It  is  further  true,  it  seems  also 
indisputable,  that  where  the  contact  with  Him 
has  not  been  made  no  other  gift  of  grace  can 
enter.  The  life  cannot  flow  from  the  Vine  to 


OF  THE  CHKISTLANT  FAITH  111 


the  branch  until  the  branch  is  grafted  into  the 
Vine.  This  explains  why  an  unbaptized  person 
cannot  receive  the  Holy  Communion  as  a  spirit¬ 
ual  food,  and  why  we  ought  never  to  think  of 
giving  other  sacraments  to  men  until  they  have 
been  born  into  the  sphere  of  the  sacramental 
gifts  by  the  first  of  all  the  sacraments,  Holy 
Baptism. 

Life  cannot  continue,  so  far  as  we  know  it  in 
the  world,  without  food.  If  any  of  us  should 
go  without  food  for  any  great  period  we  would 
lose  strength,  and  sooner  or  later  die.  If  a 
child  is  deprived  of  food  it  also  dies,  but  it  dies 
sooner  than  we  would.  Therefore,  by  parallel 
and  the  parallel  is  the  Lord’s  own,  we  must  have 
food  for  our  souls,  and  we  must  partake  of  that 
food.  Here  again  we  have  the  same  sacramental 
principle.  Spiritual  things  can  only  be  given, 
with  certainty  of  reception,  through  material 
things.  We  turn  to  the  Gospels  and  we  read  of 
the  Lord  taking  bread  and  wine,  the  simplest 
elements  of  food  as  used  in  His  day,  and  making 
them  the  vehicles  by  which  men  should  receive 
the  food  of  the  soul.  And  that  food,  mark  you, 
according  to  His  own  words,  is  Himself,  under 
the  two  essential  elements  of  flesh  and  blood, 
“the  true  food  and  the  true  drink,”  as  He  said 
at  Capernaum.  It  is  not  something  material. 
The  disciples  thought  it  was,  when  He  said  the 
words,  as,  something  that  was  to  come  in  the 
future;  but,  when  the  time  for  the  Institution 
came,  then  they  understood  their  mistake  and 


112  SOME  FOUNDATION  TRUTHS 


found  that  they  have  a  sacrament,  i.  e.,  the  two 
familiar  elements  of  material  food  serve  as  the 
media  for  giving  them  His  own  self  for  the  sup¬ 
port  of  their  spiritual  life.  The  outward  form 
is  but  the  vehicle  of  the  inner  reality,  and  that 
reality  is  not  something  which  appeals  to  their 
imagination  or  sentiment,  it  is  a  vital  thing  in 
itself,  endued  with  life  and  capable  of  conveying 
life  to  them  who  receive  it.  And  further  we 
must  remember  that  it  is  food  for  the  spirit  and 
so  its  reality  is  not  material  form  but  the  living 
presence  of  a  spiritual  reality,  which  has  in  it¬ 
self  life  of  the  sort  which  the  sacrament  is  in¬ 
tended  to  convey.  Furthermore,  as  the  Lord 
Himself  taught,  the  living  presence  within  the 
sacrament  is  nothing  less  than  His  own  pres¬ 
ence;  they  who  partake  of  the  outward  form 
partake  of  Him,  in  actual  real  participation,  but 
as  He  is  spiritual,  reaching  their  souls  through 
material  things,  so  in  this  sacrament  He  comes 
in  spiritual — but  none  the  less  real — presence  to 
reach  their  spirits  by  the  vehicle  of  material 
things. 

There  is  a  third  necessity;  life  and  food  are 
not  enough  if  we  are  to  accomplish  anything. 
We  must  have  power.  In  the  material  life  this 
power  comes  largely  from  the  strengthening 
quality  of  the  food  which  we  eat,  partly  from  our 
training  and  exercise.  In  the  spiritual  world 
the  same  thing  is  true;  spiritual  power  in  a 
very  real  sense  comes  to  us  from  the  spiritual 
food,  but  we  have  more  than  that.  There  is 


OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH  113 

a  special  gift  which  is  the  indwelling  of  the 
Spirit  and  this  is  the  peculiar  source  of  power 
to  the  soul  of  the  Christian.  As  our  Lord  Him¬ 
self  said  to  the  Eleven  on  the  day  of  His  Ascen¬ 
sion  the  Spirit  would  come  and  they  would  be 
endued  with  power  from  on  high.  Once  more 
the  gift  is  of  a  sacramental  character;  it  comes 
by  means  of  outward  signs  and  vehicles,  not  in 
this  instance  of  Christ’s  own  appointed  form  or 
matter  so  far  as  the  scriptural  records  tell  us, 
but  under  the  guidance  of  the  Holy  Spirit  Him¬ 
self.  The  manner  of  giving,  as  we  see  very 
plainly  in  the  Acts,  is  by  the  laying  on  of  hands, 
together  with  special  directive  prayers  which  tell 
the  purpose  for  which  the  power  is  given.  The 
spiritual  gift  of  the  indwelling  of  the  Holy  Ghost 
is  given  by  the  outward  physical,  and  so  material 
action,  and  as  such  is  truly  sacramental. 

hi 

Sacraments,  then,  in  the  broadest  sense  are  the 
outward  means  by  which,  through  the  use  of 
material  things,  we  are  joined  to  Christ’s  Body, 
born  into  it  and  through  union  with  the  Body 
are  made  one  with  Him  and  receive  from  Him 
food  for  our  soul’s  life  and  power  to  fulfil  our 
responsibilities  in  this  life  and  prepare  for  the 
life  beyond.  It  may  not  be  necessary  to  say 
more  than  we  have  of  what  constitute  sacra¬ 
ments,  but  it  may  not  be  amiss  to  remind  you 
that  in  a  formally  exact  sense  there  are  always 


114  SOME  FOUNDATION  TEUTHS 


two  and  sometimes  three  elements  to  be  con¬ 
sidered  in  connection  with  them.  There  is  al¬ 
ways  the  outward  part,  which  is  spoken  of  as 
Form  and  Matter;  the  inward  part,  which  is 
the  spiritual  grace  or  power  given;  and  then, 
in  the  Eucharist  especially,  there  is  the  actual 
Spiritual  presence  through  which  the  grace  is 
conferred.  By  Form  we  mean  the  appointed 
words;  in  Holy  Baptism  these  are  those  which 
St.  Matthew  records  as  part  of  the  Lord’s  com¬ 
mand,  “The  Name  of  the  Father  and  the  Son  and 
the  Holy  Ghost”;  in  the  Holy  Eucharist  the 
Form  is  not  specified  by  our  Lord  Himself,  but 
the  words  which  He  used  in  the  Institution  have 
always  been  used  and  with  them  is  coupled,  in  al¬ 
most  all  liturgies  in  some  form  or  another,  the 
Invocation  of  the  Holy  Spirit.  In  Confirma¬ 
tion  there  is  no  commonly  accepted  Form.  The 
Matter  of  Holy  Baptism  and  of  the  Holy  Eucha¬ 
rist  are  of  the  Lord’s  appointment,  water  in  the 
former,  bread  and  wine  in  the  latter;  in  Con¬ 
firmation  the  laying  on  of  hands  is  the  equiva¬ 
lent  to  the  Matter,  with  which  in  the  Eastern 
and  Eoman  communions  there  is  the  use  of  oil 
in  annointing.  In  Holy  Baptism  the  grace  is 
described  in  the  Prayer  Book  in  these  terms, 
“A  death  unto  sin  and  a  new  birth  unto  right¬ 
eousness;  for  being  by  nature  born  in  sin  and 
the  children  of  wrath  we  are  hereby  made  the 
children  of  grace.”  In  the  Holy  Communion 
this  is  the  “strengthening  and  refreshing  of  our 
souls  by  the  Body  and  Blood  of  Christ,  as  our 


OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH  115 


bodies  are  by  the  Bread  and  Wine.”  In  the 
Holy  Eucharist  we  have,  in  addition,  the  pres¬ 
ence  of  the  “Body  and  Blood  of  Christ  which 
are  spiritually  taken  and  received  by  the  faith¬ 
ful  in  the  Lord’s  Supper,”  becoming,  to  use  His 
term,  the  “true  Food”  and  “true  Drink”  of  our 
souls. 

This  question  of  the  constitution  of  a  Sacra¬ 
ment  involves  rather  careful  distinction  and 
raises  controversial  points  between  us  and 
the  Churches  of  the  East.  We,  make  a  distinc¬ 
tion,  and  feel  that  it  is  a  perfectly  valid  one,  be¬ 
tween  the  two  “Sacraments  of  the  Gospel”  as 
they  are  called,  and  the  other  commonly  called 
lesser  sacraments,  lesser  not  because  of  their 
value  but  because  they  do  not  have  form  and  mat¬ 
ter  appointed  by  our  Lord  Himself  so  far  as  the 
records  tell  us.  This  distinction  is  not  known 
to  nor  recognised  by  the  ancient  churches  of  the 
East.  They  make  no  difference  in  quality,  but 
say  that  all  sacraments  recognised  as  such  by 
the  Church  are  of  equal  value,  and  in  place  of 
our  accurate  answer;  “Two  only  as  generally 
necessary  to  salvation,”  to  the  question  “How 
many  Sacraments  hath  Christ  ordained  in  His 
Church,”  they  count  seven  as  all  equally  valid 
sacraments.  So  far  as  the  West  is  concerned 
it  was  not  until  the  twelfth  century  that  the 
question  of  the  number  of  the  Sacraments  had 
created  enough  discussion  to  demand  an  an¬ 
swer.  Peter  Lombard  is  largely  responsible  for 
the  determination  of  the  seven  in  the  West  and 


116  SOME  FOUNDATION  TRUTHS 

from  his  day  the  larger  number  have  been  recog¬ 
nised  as  truly  sacraments  though  only  two  of 
them  are  of  direct  appointment  by  our  Lord. 
These  seven  are  first  those  which  give  life  and 
food,  Baptism  and  the  Holy  Communion,  which 
are  of  Christ’s  appointment;  then  those  which 
secure  the  gift  of  the  Holy  Ghost  as  an  endow¬ 
ment  of  power,  that  general  gift  which  all  Chris¬ 
tians  should  receive  in  Confirmation  and  the 
particular  gifts  of  Holy  Orders  by  which  men 
are  fitted  for  their  work  as  Deacons,  Priests  and 
Bishops.  These  four  are  of  more  general  im¬ 
portance  than  the  other  three  by  which  men  and 
women  are  bound  together  in  the  bonds  of  Holy 
Matrimony,  receive  forgiveness  of  sins  in  Abso¬ 
lution  or  Penance,  and  are  strengthened  to  face 
sickness  and  death  in  Unction.  You  see  at  once 
the  difference  of  importance  in  the  life  of  the 
Church,  possibly  in  that  of  the  individual,  be¬ 
tween  the  first  four  and  the  last  three,  just  as 
you  see  the  difference  of  importance  between 
those  which  our  Lord  instituted  and  those  which 
the  Holy  Ghost  taught  men  to  use.  But  what¬ 
ever  be  their  origin,  the  significant  point  is  that 
the  Church  conceives  them  as  means  of  grace, 
as  outward  signs  by  which  that  same  spiritual 
power  which  came  from  our  Lord  Himself  while 
on  earth,  comes  to  us  today. 

IV 

We  have  been  thinking  of  Sacraments  in  terms 


OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH  117 


of  outward  and  inward,  as  media  by  which  we 
receive  assurance  of  the  gifts  of  grace  which  they 
bring  us  through  union  with  Jesus  Christ. 
There  is  another  view  without  which  we  can¬ 
not  understand  the  practical  side  of  the  Sacra¬ 
mental  System.  To  some  minds  the  Sacraments 
are  like  charms,  they  operate  in  a  purely  mechan¬ 
ical  way.  We  do  our  part  by  receiving  them 
and  God  does  the  rest.  To  others  they  are 
merely  forms  or  rites  which  we  perform,  but 
they  are  of  virtually  no  practical  value,  they 
carry  no  gifts. 

The  truth  is  quite  contrary  to  both  these  views. 
The  Sacraments,  on  the  one  hand,  as  we  have 
seen,  do  definitely  carry  gifts,  and  on  the  other 
hand  we  are  sure  that  they  are  not  charms  which 
work  without  us.  The  Church  tells  us  very 
plainly  that  there  are  certain  prerequisites  with¬ 
out  which  we  receive  them  to  no  good  whatever. 
We  have  seen  that  Baptism  is  itself  a  prerequi¬ 
site  for  all  other  sacramental  gifts.  We  should 
see,  if  we  had  time  to  study  the  question  in  de¬ 
tail,  that  Confirmation,  under  normal  conditions, 
is  required  before  Holy  Communion  and  both 
before  the  gift  of  Orders,  while  Penance  deals 
with  the  cleansing  of  the  soul  and  is  needed 
whenever  the  soul  is  stained  with  sin.  These 
conditions  apply  to  one  sacrament  following  on 
another ;  but  there  is  something  more  personal  in 
character  which  stands  as  a  prerequisite  for 
even  Holy  Baptism.  No  one  can  receive  it,  nor 
any  other  sacramental  gift  to  his  souPs  health 


118  SOME  FOUNDATION  TRUTHS 


without  Faith ;  and  the  Church  tells  us  that  Re¬ 
pentance  is  a  further  requirement  for  the  recep¬ 
tion  of  both  Holy  Baptism  and  the  Holy  Com¬ 
munion.  The  reason  for  this  is  not  hard  to  find. 
The  Sacraments  are  the  way  by  which  we  re¬ 
ceive  the  gifts  of  Christ,  by  which  we  come  into 
union  with  Him,  but  unless  we  give  ourselves  to 
Him,  unless  we  submit  our  will  to  Him  and  are 
ready  to  accept  what  He  offers,  He  remains  un¬ 
able  to  help  us.  We  have  in  the  Gospels  more 
than  one  instance  where  Christ’s  inability  to  ac¬ 
complish  results  was  directly  due  to  the  lack  of 
faith  in  those  who  needed  His  help,  and  the  very 
emphasis  which  He  lays  on  faith  implies  the 
same  thing.  The  basis  of  sin  is  rebellion  and  the 
thing.  The  basis  of  sin  is  rebellion  and  the 
only  cure  for  rebellion  is  submission  and  peni¬ 
tence,  or  the  change  of  view  which  makes  us  see 
life  as  God  means  us  to  see  it.  Therefore  Re¬ 
pentance  and  Faith  are  prerequisites  for  re¬ 
ceiving  sacramental  grace. 

The  sacramental  life,  like  all  life,  is  a  prog¬ 
ress.  We  go  from  strength  to  strength.  Let  me, 
as  I  close  this  discussion,  try  to  describe  the 
progress  of  a  soul  living  in  constant  use  of  the 
Sacraments.  I  shall  confine  myself  to  the  three 
which,  with  us,  are  of  ordinary  and  general  use, 
Baptism,  Confirmation  and  Holy  Communion  as 
the  gifts  of  life  and  power,  and  food,  through 
which  we  have  union  with  and  strength  from  our 
Lord. 

When  we  are  born  we  enter  life  with  innate 
tendencies  on  the  spiritual  side  as  truly  as  on 


OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH  119 


the  physical  and  mental.  The  most  outstanding 
tendency  is  to  sin.  Every  human  being,  as 
surely  as  he  is  born  into  the  world,  is  certain 
to  sin.  There  is  an  inheritance  which  always 
manifests  itself  in  sin ;  the  character  of  the  mani¬ 
festation  is  not  the  same  for  all,  men’s  sins  differ 
and  the  temptation  wlrich  I  find  it  almost  im¬ 
possible  to  resist  another  might  never  feel,  and 
the  reverse  is  equally  true ;  but  of  whatever  sort 
my  sin  may  be,  it  is  due  in  no  slight  degree  to 
the  fact  of  my  inherited  tendency  to  commit  it. 
This  tendency  is  as  it  were  a  malignant  germ 
whose  development  is  sure  and  under  some  con¬ 
ditions  is  apt  to  be  rapid.  How  can  this  germ 
be  killed?  How  can  sin  be  destroyed  in  me? 
Jesus  Christ  in  His  own  life  was  absolutely  free 
from  sin.  Whenever  He  touched  sin  He  cured 
it.  The  wholeness  of  body  which  contact  with 
Him  brought  was  often  but  typical  of  a  whole¬ 
ness  of  soul  within.  More  than  once  He  pref¬ 
aced  the  physical  cure  by  forgiving  the  man’s 
sin.  What  contact  with  Him  in  the  flesh  accom¬ 
plished  while  He  was  here  on  earth  contact  with 
Him  always  does.  His  is  the  power  and  author¬ 
ity  to  forgive  sin  and  He  does  it  by  personal  con¬ 
tact  and  as  we  have  seen  this  personal  contact 
is  ours  through  the  Sacraments.  We  get  it  first 
when  we  are  made  a  part  of  Him  in  our  Baptism. 
The  first  assault  is  then  made  upon  our  tendency 
to  sin.  We  receive  Him,  as  it  were  as  an  anti¬ 
dote,  an  anti-toxin  if  I  may  be  permitted  to  use 
that  word  in  this  connection.  Sin,  in  us,  re- 


120  SOME  FOUNDATION  TRUTHS 


ceives  its  first  assault.  Then — too  often  alas  it 
is  much  postponed  and  sin  in  consequence  gets  a 
hold  which  is  harder  to  break — at  last  we  are 
confirmed.  We  receive  His  promised  gift  of 
power,  power  to  do  what  He  expects  and  desires, 
power  to  use  His  gifts;  the  Holy  Spirit  enters 
our  soul  and  takes  the  things  of  Christ  and 
shows  them  unto  us.  Then  we  begin  to  receive 
the  Holy  Communion.  We  have  seen  that  this  is 
the  food  of  life,  but  we  must  not  forget  that  the 
food  is  no  less  than  our  Lord  Himself,  verily 
and  indeed  taken  and  received  in  the  Lord’s 
Supper.  He  re-enters  our  souls  again  and  again, 
He  comes  into  personal  contact  with  us,  and,  as 
the  antitoxin  of  certain  diseases  oft  repeated 
finally  destroys  the  power  of  the  germ  and  makes 
us  immune  from  that  sickness,  so  the  constant 
coming  of  our  Lord  in  the  Holy  Communion,  if 
we  welcome  Him  by  faith  and  repentance  and 
love,  gradually  destroys  the  power  of  sin,  kills 
the  tendency,  and  the  soul  becomes  more  and 
more  as  God  would  have  it  and  we  grow  into  the 
likeness  of  our  Lord,  until  when  this  earthly  life 
is  ended  we  go  forth  into  the  next  world  as  one 
of  those  who  have  realized  in  themselves  the 
power  of  Jesus  Christ,  Whose  sacramental  pres¬ 
ence  together  with  the  power  of  His  Holy  Spirit 
has  gradually  perfected  us  into  some  semblance 
of  His  own  perfection.  The  progress  is  not  in 
actual  experience  one  unbroken  growth  in  holi¬ 
ness.  In  most  of  us  sin  re-asserts  itself.  Our 
faith  grows  dim,  our  will  to  holiness  becomes 


OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH  121 


weak  and  we  give  ourselves  over  into  a  life  of 
lawlessness  before  God.  The  return  is  not  easy. 
Its  way  is  the  way  of  sorrow  and  penitence,  of 
confession  and  humiliation,  the  way  of  cleansing ; 
but  when  once  we  have  again  set  our  feet  on  the 
path  of  peace,  though  the  journey  be  harder  for 
a  while  because  of  our  failure,  the  same  sacra¬ 
mental  contact  with  our  Lord  once  more  deadens 
the  power  of  sin  and  we  can  again  hope  to  con¬ 
quer  in  the  end.  But  the  power,  as  the  Church 
sees  it,  is  not  ours  but  His  working  in  us,  and 
the  way  by  which  He  comes  to  us  is  the  way 
of  those  outward  pledges  of  His  inner  grace 
which  we  call  Sacraments,  the  regular  use  of 
which  is  the  mark  of  true  churchmanship. 


CHAPTEK  VI 


THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  CHRISTIAN  DUTY 

Christianity  requires  us  to  live  a  certain  kind 
of  life.  The  ideal  of  that  life  is  peculiar  to 
Christianity,  and  the  fact  that  it  is  to  be  lived 
not  on  the  basis  of  obedience  to  particular  pre¬ 
cepts  but  as  the  expression  of  great  principles  of 
living,  makes  a  demand  upon  the  Christian  to 
which  no  other  religion  approaches.  If  we  were 
to  speak  in  absolute  accuracy  we  would  not  talk 
of  the  Principles  of  Christian  Duty,  but  of  the 
Principles  for  the  guidance  of  a  Christian  in 
right  living.  The  distinction  is  the  difference 
between  “I  ought”  as  a  matter  of  obligatory 
precepts,  and  “I  live,  yet  not  I  but  Christ.”  I, 
who  by  my  baptism  am  “in  Christ,”  i.  e.,  as  we 
have  seen,  a  part  of  His  Body,  in  actual  con¬ 
tact  with  Him  through  Sacraments,  must  live  in 
a  certain  way.  If  I  am  to  fulfil  the  conditions 
of  my  relationship  to  Him,  if  I  am  to  act,  as  a 
member  of  that  Body  which  is  His,  there  is  a 
compulsion  not  of  formal  duty  laid  down  in  ex¬ 
ternal  laws  and  ordinances,  but  the  compulsion 
of  an  interior  life  that  finds  its  truest  expres¬ 
sion  in  living  as  Christ  revealed  we  should  live. 
This  discussion  would  be  incomplete  if  we  did 


OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH  123 


not  attempt  to  search  out  and  find  what  is  that 
ideal  of  life  which  our  Lord  left  behind  Him  in 
the  world;  and  what  are  the  motives  which  will 
help  us  to  fulfil  that  ideal  in  ourselves.  To 
this  then  we  shall  now  turn. 

I 

St.  Athanasius  in  his  treatise  “The  Incarna¬ 
tion  of  the  Word  of  God,”  wrote  these  words : 
“The  Word  of  God  came  in  His  own  Person,  in 
order  that  as  He  was  the  image  of  the  Father, 
He  might  be  able  to  recreate  the  man  made  after 
that  image”  .  .  .  “for  as  when  a  portrait 
painted  on  a  panel  has  disappeared  in  conse¬ 
quence  of  external  stain,  there  is  need  again  for 
him  to  come  whose  the  portrait  is  that  the  like¬ 
ness  may  be  renewed  on  the  same  material,  be¬ 
cause  for  the  sake  of  his  picture  the  material 
itself  on  which  it  has  been  painted  is  not  thrown 
away  but  the  likeness  is  retraced  upon  it;  so, 
similarly,  the  all  Holy  Son  of  the  Father,  being 
the  image  of  the  Father,  came  into  our  sphere 
to  renew  man,  made  after  Himself,  and  to  find 
him  as  one  lost,  through  the  remission  of  sins, 
the  which  He  Himself  says  in  the  Gospel.  ‘I 
came  to  seek  and  to  save  that  which  was  lost/ 
WTherefore  also  He  says  to  the  Jews :  ‘Except 
a  man  be  born  anew/  not  signifying  as  they  un¬ 
derstood  Him  the  birth  from  woman,  but  mean¬ 
ing  the  soul  regenerated  and  recreated  in  the 
image  of  God.”  This  description  gives  us  a  true 


124  SOME  FOUNDATION  TRUTHS 


account  of  one  aspect  of  the  life-work  of  our 
Lord.  He  came  to  restore  the  image  of  God,  i.  e. 
to  show  men  what  God's  ideal  was,  and  by  union 
with  Himself  to  recreate  them  in  that  image. 
Jesus  Christ  revealed  to  men  an  ideal  life  as 
God  meant  men  to  live  it,  and  the  ideal  we  can 
find  only  in  His  own  life.  We  will  fail  if  we 
search  for  it  in  His  teaching  alone.  Certain 
parts  of  the  ideal  found  expression  in  the  memo¬ 
ries  of  the  Apostles  not  in  the  words  but  in  the 
deeds  of  their  Master.  If  we  are  to  understand 
what  His  ideal  of  life  was,  what  has  been  set  be¬ 
fore  us  as  an  example  of  Christian  living,  we 
must  study  His  life  as  a  whole,  and  from  the 
sum  total  of  that  life  seek  to  extract  the  im¬ 
portant  things  which  make  up  the  revelation  of 
human  life  as  it  should  be. 

The  first  fact  which  we  recognise  in  that  study 
is  the  tremendous  reality  of  sin.  The  “mysteri¬ 
ous  fact,”  as  Ottley  calls  sin,  is  recognised  by 
men  of  all  nations  of  the  world.  They  do  not 
understand  it,  they  often  do  not  know  the  mean¬ 
ing  of  that  strange  discontent  and  discomfort 
at  life.  They  have  tried  in  many  ways  to  ex¬ 
press  it,  and  to  be  free  from  the  thing  itself. 
With  imperfect  knowledge  of  God  they  cannot 
know  the  whole  truth  about  it.  But  the  Chris¬ 
tian  knows,  and  this  “mysterious  fact”  of  com¬ 
mon  human  experience  is  what  the  Scripture 
calls  sin,  the  failure  to  do  what  God  expects  of 
men,  the  deliberate  refusal  to  obey  His  com¬ 
mands  and  to  follow  the  way  which  He  points 


OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH  125 


out  for  men  to  walk.  “Man  everywhere  and  al¬ 
ways  lias  felt  himself  called  to  a  life  of  righteous¬ 
ness  and  fellowship  with  God  and  has  perpetu¬ 
ally  fallen  short  of  it.”  Whether  we  read  St. 
Paul,  the  Christian  Apostle,  or  Ovid,  the  Roman 
poet,  we  read  the  same  thing,  “We  desire  the 
better  things,  we  follow  those  that  are  worse” ; 
“The  evil  that  I  would  not  that  I  do,  and  the 
good  that  I  would  that  do  I  not.”  There  is  no 
question  that  St.  John  is  right  when  he  says : 
“The  whole  world  lieth  in  the  wicked  one.”  This 
great  world  embracing  fact  of  sin  was  a  tremen¬ 
dous  reality  to  Jesus  Christ.  More  than  once 
He  bears  witness  to  it  by  the  way  He  brings 
forgiveness  of  sin.  One  of  the  most  notable  in¬ 
stances  is  that  in  which  He  welcomed  and  for¬ 
gave  the  sinful  woman  who  had  loved  too  much 
and  fallen ;  “go  in  peace,”  He  said  to  her.  “The 
Lord  hath  put  away  thy  sin.”  The  paralytic 
whose  four  friends  let  him  down  through  the 
roof  till  he  lay  before  the  Lord,  heard  the  amaz¬ 
ing  words :  “Son,  thy  sins  have  been  forgiven 
thee.”  Our  Lord  did  not  confine  the  evidence 
of  His  horror  of  sin  and  its  constant  presence 
in  the  world  to  Galilee.  On  several  occasions 
He  let  the  men  of  Jerusalem  and  of  Peroea  know 
what  He  thought  of  it,  and  when  He  was  with 
the  disciples  on  Easter  night  He  breathed  on 
them  and  fulfilled  the  promise  He  had  made  be¬ 
fore  to  St.  Peter  alone,  saying  the  words  which 
have  been  constantly  used  in  Ordination  to  the 
Priesthood;  “Whose  soever  sins  ye  remit  they 


126  SOME  FOUNDATION  TRUTHS 


are  remitted  unto  them  and  whose  soever  sins  ye 
retain  they  are  retained.”  The  first  claim  to 
power  which  He  made  in  Galilee  was  the  right 
to  forgive  sin  and  He  proved  He  had  the  power 
by  making  the  paralytic  well ;  the  first  power  He 
granted  the  Eleven  Apostles  on  the  Resurrection 
night  was  this  power  to  forgive. 

These  cases  are  very  plain ;  equally  plain  in  its 
witness  to  the  fact  and  effect  of  sin  are  the  three 
great  parables  of  God’s  love  which  St.  Luke  re¬ 
cords  in  the  fifteenth  chapter,  the  parables  of  the 
Lost  Sheep,  the  Lost  Coin,  the  Prodigal  Son,  to 
give  them  their  familiar  titles,  titles  which  so 
completely  miss  the  point  of  each  story.  In 
each  of  these  parables  there  is  the  picture  of  sin : 
the  sheep  has  gone  astray,  the  coin  has  been  lost, 
the  prodigal  son  has  wilfully  left  the  companion¬ 
ship  of  father  and  brother  and  gone  off  into  a  life 
of  gross  self-indulgence  and  dissoluteness ;  in 
each  there  is  the  definite  suggestion  of  the  pos¬ 
sibility  of  return  and  the  happiness  which  is  sure 
to  result,  not  curiously  enough  as  pictured  in 
these  parables,  the  happiness  of  the  penitent  but 
in  heaven,  i.  e.  both  among  God’s  companions 
and  in  His  own  loving  heart  because  of  their 
penitence.  As  Jesus  Christ  Himself  said  “He 
came  to  seek  and  to  save  that  which  had  been 
lost.”  This  was  His  purpose,  as  even  His  name 
signifies,  “ J ehovah  shall  save,”  and  as  the  angels 
proclaimed  at  His  birth  He  was  “Born  a  Sav¬ 
iour.” 

Christ  teaches  us  not  only  the  reality  of  sin 


OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH  127 


but  its  universality.  There  are  none  free  from 
it;  as  St.  Paul  put  it  “Forasmuch  as  all  have 
sinned  and  come  short/’  so  our  Lord  understood 
it.  This  and  only  this  can  explain  the  phrases 
in  St.  John  3,  not  only  the  words  “except  a  man 
be  born  again  he  cannot  enter  the  Kingdom  of 
Heaven”  but  the  other  verse  which  is  sometimes 
considered  to  be  the  Apostle’s  comment  rather 
than  the  Master's  own  words :  “God  so  loved 
the  world  that  He  gave  His  only  begotten  Son 
that  who  soever  believeth  in  Him  should  not 
perish  but  have  everlasting  life.”  More  than  in 
the  English  the  Greek  phrases  are  as  general  as 
it  is  possible  to  put  them.  They  are,  in  the 
one  case,  the  indefinite  “any  one.”  And  in  the 
other  the  inclusive  “every  one.”  There  is  no 
room  for  exception.  What  is  true  of  one  is,  es¬ 
sentially,  true  of  every  one.  The  details  of  its 
form  may  vary,  does  vary,  but  the  characteristic 
beneath  is  the  same  in  all. 

There  is,  however,  one  exception  in  this  story 
of  human  sin,  and  it  is  the  exception  which 
makes  the  fact  more  striking  and  defines  the 
Lord’s  attitude  toward  it.  He  Himself  is  free 
from  sin  and  He  knows  it  and  glories  in  it, 
“Which  of  you,”  He  said,  “convinceth  me  of 
sin?”  The  words  were  said  in  the  face  of  the 
bitterest  opposition,  and  would  have  been 
snapped  up  immediately  if  possible;  but  St.  John 
relates  the  incident  to  drive  home  the  complete 
sinlessness  of  the  Master.  This  is  evidenced,  on 
the  other  side,  by  the  positive  statements  of  our 


128  SOME  FOUNDATION  TRUTHS 


Lord.  He  did  not  come  to  do  His  own  will,  but 
the  will  of  Him  who  sent  Him,  to  do  what  God 
the  Father  wanted  His  Incarnate  Son  to  do  was 
the  purpose  of  His  life;  and  as  He  thought  of 
it,  at  the  end  of  that  life  as  He  faced  death,  He, 
recalling  His  readiness  to  do  this,  said :  “I 
am  content  to  do  it,  yea  Thy  law  is  within  my 
heart.”  And  further  He  had  confidence,  a  con¬ 
fidence  which  can  have  but  one  explanation,  that 
He  actually  had  done  all  that  God  His  Father 
had  expected  of  Him.  “I  have  fulfilled  thy  will, 
O  my  God,”  He  said;  and  St.  John  writing  of 
the  last  moments  on  the  Cross  records  that  our 
Lord,  wdien  He  knew  that  the  whole  of  God’s  pur¬ 
pose  and  plan  was  accomplished,  said  “I  thirst.” 
It  was  this  complete  agreement  of  will  and  pur¬ 
pose,  this  absolute  fulfilment  of  the  Father’s  wish 
which  won  for  Jesus  Christ  the  twice  repeated 
commendation  from  His  Father  “This  is  My  be¬ 
loved  Son  in  whom  I  am  well  pleased.”  We  may 
confidently  believe  then  that  sin  had  no  place  in 
the  life  of  Jesus  Christ,  whether  it  was  by  fail¬ 
ure  to  do  right  or  by  actually  committing  wrong. 

The  Lord  had  a  tremendous  sense  of  the  reality 
and  universality  of  sin;  but  what  is  sin?  The 
importance  of  this  question  cannot  be  over- 
stressed;  for  upon  the  answer  will  depend  our 
attitude  toward  our  Lord  and  His  work.  St. 
John’s  definition  is  blunt,  abrupt,  and  to  men  of 
today  distasteful,  but  it  is  true.  He  says  “sin  is 
lawlessness”  or  as  we  might  paraphrase  it  rebel- 


OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH  129 


lion.  At  the  center  of  personality  lies  the  will. 
However  we  may  explain  it  psychologically,  so 
far  as  the  moral  values  are  concerned,  man  is 
definitely  self-determinative.  He  decides  his 
own  conduct  in  the  last  analysis,  no  matter  what 
part  environment  may  play ;  and  the  whole  ques¬ 
tion  as  to  the  true  character  of  sin  depends  on 
this  fact  that  there  is  on  the  one  side  God’s  will 
and  on  the  other  man’s  will;  and  when  a  man 
sets  his  will  against  God’s  and  refuses  to  do 
what  God  wishes  him  to  do,  becomes  a  law  unto 
himself,  then  he  sins.  This  is  lawlessness,  re¬ 
bellion  against  God  is  the  setting  man’s  own 
will  in  opposition  to  the  will  of  God. 

But  we  will  find  a  number  of  explanations  of 
this  fact  of  human  life  which  take  the  will  out 
of  sin  and  make  our  conduct  “wrong  doing” 
which  has  no  moral  quality.  Some  people  de¬ 
scribe  this  as  “imperfection”  i.  e.,  man  is  striv¬ 
ing  upward  and  he  has  not  yet  attained  that 
completeness  and  finish  in  life  which  God  meant 
him  to  have.  There  is  no  moral  quality  in  con¬ 
duct  in  this  definition,  so  far  as  we  know  morals. 
On  the  other  hand  sin  is  regarded  as  disease,  in 
which  once  more  there  is  no  moral  quality  be¬ 
cause  there  is  no  power  in  the  man’s  will  to  de¬ 
cide  on  the  result  of  his  own  conduct.  He  may 
be,  like  the  prodigal,  “beside  himself”  but  unlike 
him  he  cannot  “come  to”  for  there  is  nothing  to 
turn  from,  he  has  simply  to  overcome  the  disease 
and  go  on  to  better  things.  Still  another  concep¬ 
tion  of  sin  makes  it  an  “animal  impulse”  which 


130  SOME  FOUNDATION  TRUTHS 


is  natural  and  normal  but  this  too  robs  conduct 
of  all  its  finer  elements  and  reduces  man, 
morally,  to  the  level  of  the  beasts.  These  ex¬ 
amples — they  are  only  some  of  the  alternates — 
are  all  alike  in  that  they  forget  the  place  of  the 
will  in  man’s  life,  and  that  they  ride  flat  against 
the  teaching  of  Holy  Scripture  from  which  we 
learn  that  God  made  man  in  His  own  image,  giv¬ 
ing  him  a  moral  nature  with  all  its  possibilities, 
and  started  him  in  a  life  of  fellowship  with  Him¬ 
self  from  which  man  departed,  “fell”  is  the 
proper  word,  by  an  act  of  rebellion  or  lawless¬ 
ness  ;  and  that  in  consequence  and  in  addition  he 
passed  on  to  his  children  a  nature  prone  to  evil 
and  apt  to  sin. 


II 

The  second  fact  which  the  Gospels  show  us  in 
Christ’s  life  and  the  Epistles  stress  is  that  God 
was  not  content  to  leave  man  thus  shut  out  from 
Him,  but  that  He  sent  His  only  begotten  Son 
into  the  world  to  set  men  free  from  this  bondage 
of  sin  and  restore  him  to  the  life  God  intended 
him  to  have.  He  was  to  be  the  “Redeemer.” 
This  is  a  word  of  great  controversies ;  perhaps  I 
would  better  leave  it  out,  but  I  cannot.  To  at¬ 
tempt  to  define  it  with  any  pretense  of  exactness 
is  to  undertake  more  than  my  space  allows.  Per¬ 
haps  the  simplest  way  will  be  to  recall  to  our 
minds  that  it  is  the  word  used  of  setting  Israel 
free  from  the  bondage  of  Egypt,  and  that, 


OF  THE  CHKISTIAN  FAITH  131 


wherever  you  find  it,  the  underlying  idea  which 
it  describes  has  the  same  sense  of  deliverance. 
Man  because  of  his  sin  is  in  bondage.  He  is 
a  slave.  We  recognise  this  when  we  say  that 
any  one  is  a  “slave  to  a  passion”  or  an  “addict” 
to  something  which  is  wrong.  He  is  in  bondage. 
The  work  of  Jesus  Christ  is  to  set  men  free  from 
this  bondage.  They  cannot  free  themselves, 
there  is  nothing  they  can  do  to  accomplish  it. 
There  is  no  standing  place  from  which  to  secure 
deliverance.  Man  begins  wrongly.  Therefore 
our  Lord  came  into  the  world  without  sin,  and 
lived  a  sinless  life  even  on  into  death,  and  by  so 
doing  broke  the  power  of  sin  and  Satan.  He 
“led  captivity  captive”  as  the  Psalmist  puts  it, 
and  made  it  possible  for  each  and  every  man  to 
become  free.  In  thinking  of  our  Lord’s  redemp¬ 
tive  acts  we  must  remember  that  His  death  is  a 
means  of  redemption  not  because  He  died,  but 
because  He  was  obedient  to  His  Father’s  will 
clear  through  to  death.  As  St.  Bernard  put  it 
“It  was  the  willing  act  of  one  who  died  of  his 
own  accord.” 

The  Cross,  with  what  follows  in  our  Lord’s 
own  life,  made  it  possible  for  man  to  come  again 
into  union  with  God.  It  gave  an  appeal  to  sym¬ 
pathy.  Jesus  Christ  was  absolutely  right  when 
He  said  if  He  were  lifted  up  He  would  draw  all 
men  to  Himself.  The  Indian  chief  who  heard 
for  the  first  time  the  story  of  God’s  love  in  send¬ 
ing  His  Son  and  of  the  death  of  the  Son  upon 
the  Cross  at  the  hands  of  His  enemies  and  said 


132  SOME  FOUNDATION  TRUTHS 


“I  wish  I  had  been  there  with  my  braves/’  felt 
the  appeal  of  it.  The  attractiveness  of  the  Cross 
is  the  secret  of  the  message  of  Christianity  to 
the  sinner  for  it  tells  us  not  of  the  death  of  a 
sinless  man, — there  is  no  appeal  save  for  sympa¬ 
thy  toward  him  in  that, — but  of  the  love  of  the 
Father  who  gave  His  only  Son  to  die  and  the  love 
of  that  Son  who  willingly  died  the  death  of 
shame  for  us  men  and  for  our  salvation.  But 
the  attraction  of  the  Cross  is  not  simply  that  of 
the  revelation  of  the  Love  of  God,  it  is  also,  and 
this  means  much  to  men,  the  promise  of  deliver¬ 
ance.  He  died  and  by  His  death  He  set  men  free. 
There  is  a  still  further  message  in  it.  He  not 
only  made  it  possible  for  men  to  become  free  but 
He  opens  the  way  toward  help  and  grace,  so  that 
by  His  power,  reaching  us  from  Him  through 
the  sacraments,  we  can  hope  to  overcome 
sins. 

Jesus  Christ  did  not  simply  reveal  to  us  the 
fact  of  sin,  but  along  with  that  revelation  He 
made  certain  the  equally  important  truth  of  His 
own  triumph  over  sin  and  death  that  we  might 
be  delivered.  He  made  a  different  life  possible 
for  us  because  of  His  death  and  victory.  And 
because  of  this  His  life  becomes  for  us  an  ideal 
for  our  own  life.  He  is,  as  the  Collect  puts  it 
an  “ensample  for  us”  and  it  is  now,  but  only 
now,  that  we  can  turn  to  see  what  that  life  may 
tell  us.  I  do  not  think  we  can  over  emphasize 
the  truth  that  His  life  can  become  an  ideal  for 
us  only  if  He  has  won  for  us  the  possibility  of 


OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH  133 


our  approaching  that  ideal.  To  set  it  before 
sinful  men  without  opening  to  them  a  means  to 
attain  it,  would  be  a  cruelty  which  would  utterly 
destroy  the  revelation  in  Him  of  God’s  love.  If 
I  must  try  to  live  as  He  did  or  even  as  He  taught 
— there  is  no  real  difference — and  do  it  by  my 
own  power  I  am  hopeless,  as  men  were  hopeless 
before  He  came.  But  if  His  death  and  Resurrec¬ 
tion  broke  the  power  of  sin  and  Satan,  and  if  by 
His  Sacraments  I  can  have  His  grace  and 
strength  to  help  me  overcome  my  own  sin,  then 
the  Cross  becomes  a  wonderful  revelation  of 
love  and  I  am  filled  with  hope  and  have  the 
courage  to  attempt  to  reach  the  goal  which  other¬ 
wise  would  be  impossible. 

hi 

The  first  fact  which  we  see  in  the  study  of  our 
Lord’s  own  life  on  earth  is  that  it  is  a  life  of 
sonship  with  God.  He  is  constantly  conscious 
of  this  relationship.  From  the  day  when  He 
answered  His  Blessed  Mother  in  the  Temple,  a 
boy  of  twelve  years  of  age,  “Why  did  ye  seek 
Me;  did  ye  not  know  that  I  must  be  in  My 
Father’s  house,”  even  if  not  before  that  day, 
Jesus  never  forgot  that  He  was  God’s  Son. 
And  this  must  come  first  with  us.  We,  too,  by 
our  Baptism,  are  made  the  Children  of  God.  We 
come  into  a  new  relationship  with  Him  and 
that  can  never  be  changed.  It  is  important  to 
emphasize  this.  We  may  forget  it,  we  may  even 


134  SOME  FOUNDATION  TRUTHS 


set  ourselves  to  ignore  it.  We  may  live  abso¬ 
lutely  without  any  consciousness  of  it,  and  fi¬ 
nally  be  outcasts  from  His  eternal  presence  for 
ever,  but  none  the  less  we  are  the  children  of 
God  by  adoption,  His  redeemed  sons.  The  pull, 
if  I  may  so  phrase  it,  of  birth,  the  force  of  no¬ 
bless  oblige ,  the  pride,  proper  legitimate  pride, 
of  inheritance  of  an  honorable  name  is  but  the 
earthly  counterpart  of  what  this  spiritual  rela¬ 
tionship  means  or  should  mean  in  our  lives  in 
creating  an  ideal  for  us.  We  are  made  the  sons 
of  God,  and  we  must  live  as  becomes  sons.  And 
no  small  part  of  our  life  as  sons  is  comradeship. 
The  tie  which  binds  children  to  parents,  shows 
itself,  not  unfrequently,  thank  God,  in  the  clos¬ 
est  most  delightful  intimacy;  the  boy  or  girl 
would  rather,  quite  honestly  rather,  be  with  fa¬ 
ther  or  mother  than  any  one  else.  The  same 
thing  is  true  of  our  relationship  with  our  Father 
in  Heaven.  We  have  not  only  the  inspiration  of 
the  fact  but  we  have  the  comradeship  that  comes 
from  the  fact.  This  comradeship  with  us,  as 
with  our  Lord,  find  its  truest  expression  in 
prayer  and  communion.  This  is  really  what  we 
mean  by  the  saying  that  a  Christian  life  is  a  life 
with  God.  St.  Irenaeus,  writing  toward  the  end 
of  the  second  century  puts  it  in  these  words: 
“Fellowship  with  God  is  life  and  light  and  the 
enjoyment  of  the  good  things  with  Him.  The 
separation  from  God  is  death.”  The  more  truly 
and  fully  the  Christian  realizes  this  and  makes 
it  the  daily  expression  of  his  own  life  the  more 


OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH  135 


nearly  He  will  approach  the  ideal  of  life  as  Jesus 
Christ  gave  it  to  us. 

At  the  bottom  of  this  fellowship  with  God  lies 
Faith.  I  have  already  spoken  of  Faith  as  the 
surrender  of  ourselves  to  God.  It  is  more  than 
that  and  yet  it  is  most  hard  to  define  or  even  de¬ 
scribe.  No  one  has  ever  done  this  so  well  as  the 
writer  of  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews.  To  his 
mind  it  is  Faith  which  opens  the  eye  to  the  in¬ 
visible  world  and  gives  reality  to  what  we  can 
never  know  by  the  senses.  “Here  we  see  through 
a  glass  darkly”  but  we  see;  and  it  is  Faith  that 
penetrates  the  gloom.  We  might  almost  laugh 
at  the  idea  of  a  little  water  in  the  Name  of  the 
Trinity  changing  our  whole  relationship  with 
God,  or  a  bit  of  bread  and  a  sip  of  wine  bring¬ 
ing  us  food  and  drink  for  our  souls ;  and  yet  the 
man  who  believes  knows  that  these  things  are 
true  and  he  has  no  difficulty  in  accepting  them 
and  the  many  other  truths  of  Christianity  which 
no  human  reasoning  can  ever  establish  beyond 
controversy.  Faith  alone  can  make  us  see,  and 
when  we  see,  we  know  and  are  sure  that  it  is 
Faith  not  credulity  which  gives  us  the  certainty. 
It  is  not  the  mere  acceptance  on  authority  of 
something  toward  which  reason  can  but  carry  us 
part  of  the  way.  It  is  not  merely  a  blind  “yes” 
given  to  the  call  to  believe.  Faith  is  the  sur¬ 
render  of  ourselves,  when  our  own  powers  have 
brought  us  to  the  brink  of  the  chasm  which  man 
by  himself  cannot  cross.  It  is  as  it  were  a 
throwing  of  ourselves  out  into  the  unseen  and 


136  SOME  FOUNDATION  TRUTHS 


coming  up  on  firm  ground.  For  that  is  the  con¬ 
sequence  of  Faith.  It  does  not  spring  from  cer¬ 
tainty  but  it  produces  it.  It  does  not  rise  out  of 
confidence  but  it  makes  us  sure.  And  when  once 
Faith  has  carried  us  into  that  state  of  conviction 
we  men  live  by  it  with  an  assurance  that  nothing 
can  disturb.  How  wonderful  are  the  things  that 
faith  has  accomplished  in  the  souls  of  men  and 
women.  The  chapter  in  Hebrews  gives  us  ex¬ 
amples.  We  all  can  recall  others,  for  the  power 
of  Faith  working  in  the  lives  of  people  even  of 
today  is  nothing  strange.  We  have  ourselves  ex¬ 
perienced  it,  for  we  too  may  venture  to  say  that 
we,  even  we,  “walk  by  faith  and  not  by  sight” 
and  trusting  in  God  follow  the  lead  of  His  Son’s 
guidance. 


IV 

Fellowship  with  God  through  Faith  is  the  first 
characteristic  of  life  which  we  see  in  our  Lord. 
The  second,  as  I  read  that  life,  is  worship.  I 
doubt  if  most  people  realize  what  an  important 
place  worship  held  in  our  Lord’s  own  life.  What 
is  worship?  What  is  its  central  inspiration? 
Many  of  us  need  to  revise  our  idea  of  worship. 
Too  many  people  think  of  it  as  prayer  or  praise 
or  both,  and  are  content  with  singing  hymns 
and  the  warmth  of  sentiment,  that  inspiration 
of  the  crowd  which  comes  from  a  goodly  com¬ 
pany  of  people  joining  in  prayer  and  praise  to 
God.  But  that  is  not  the  heart  of  worship, 


OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH  137 


though  both  prayer  and  praise  accompany  it. 
When  you  turn  to  the  Old  Testament  you  find 
God’s  revelation  of  what  worship  is.  We  must 
not  let  the  trend  of  modern  criticism  of  the  Old 
Testament  disturb  us  in  this  nor  becloud  our  un¬ 
derstanding.  Remember,  as  we  saw  in  an 
earlier  chapter,  that  we  need  to  distinguish  be¬ 
tween  processes  and  results.  However  the  Jew¬ 
ish  worship  may  have  developed,  at  the  bottom 
it  is  a  revelation  from  God,  and  this  revelation 
of  worship  is  used  by  the  Apostle  in  the  Epistle 
to  the  Hebrews  as  explaining  the  present  life 
and  activity  of  our  Lord  and  corresponds  to  the 
vision  which  St.  John  saw  on  Patmos.  At  the 
center  of  this  revelation  of  worship  is  Sacrifice. 
So  distinctive  is  Sacrifice  that  we  are  accustomed 
to  associate  that  idea  only  with  Old  Testament 
worship  and  to  forget  the  New  Testament  ap¬ 
plication  of  the  same  principle.  What  then  is 
Sacrifice?  It  is  surely  something  greatly  beyond 
the  killing  of  a  living  animal  and  sprinkling 
its  blood  upon  the  Altar  and  then  burning  the 
flesh  or  in  addition  feasting  upon  a  part  of  it. 
The  kernel  of  the  teaching  of  Sacrifice  is  that  a 
life  is  offered  in  place  of  the  life  of  the  offerer, 
and  that  that  offered  life  represents  the  surren¬ 
der  of  the  offerer’s  will.  There  is  more  even 
than  this  in  it.  Our  ordinary  English  expres¬ 
sion,  “self-sacrificing,”  gives  us  the  clue.  It  is 
giving  God  something  which  we  value.  How 
strongly  Malachi  brings  this  home  when  he  re¬ 
proves  the  Jew  for  offering  poor  and  unworthy 


138  SOME  FOUNDATION  TRUTHS 


sacrifices,  tlie  leavings  of  the  flock  which  were 
of  no  value !  We  can  carry  the  idea  still  further. 
This  giving  to  God  of  a  gift,  the  best  we  can 
give,  that  is  offered  to  Him  in  our  stead,  is  a 
token  of  love,  and  underneath  worship  lies  not 
faith  nor  hope,  not  service  as  is  sometimes  said, 
but  the  gift  of  what  we  value  most  to  one  we  love 
dearly  as  a  token  and  emblem  of  the  love  we 
bear  toward  him.  And  God  when  He  appointed 
sacrifice  as  a  means  of  worship,  on  the  one  hand 
gave  men  a  chance  to  show  their  devotion  to 
Him,  and  on  the  other  did  so  by  appealing  to  a 
common  instinct  of  men.  We  can  now  see  how 
worship  entered  the  life  of  Jesus  Christ.  It 
was  there  in  the  divinely  appointed  worship  of 
the  Temple  in  which  He  joined  regularly.  But 
it  was  there  still  more  in  His  own  will  giving 
Himself  up  to  fulfill  the  purpose  of  His  Father 
and  finally,  in  order  to  accomplish  that,  offering 
up  His  life  on  the  Cross,  offering  it,  I  say,  will¬ 
ingly,  for  He  had  power  to  lay  it  down  and  power 
to  take  it  again.  But  the  worship  of  Jesus 
Christ  did  not  end  with  Calvary.  It  has  a  con¬ 
tinual  existence  in  Heaven  as  the  Epistle  to  the 
Hebrews  shows.  He,  in  the  presence  of  His 
Father,  is  always  present  as  the  Lamb  slain  from 
the  foundation  of  the  world  and  by  that  sacrifice, 
unceasing  in  its  effects,  keeps  open  the  door  for 
us  and  makes  our  own  faulty  and  imperfect  sac¬ 
rifices  offered  “through  Jesus  Christ”  acceptable 
to  our  Heavenly  Father.  We  need  faith,  we 
must  have  it  to  know  God ;  but  once  we  begin  to 


OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH  139 


know  Him  we  must — it  is  a  real  necessity  of  our 
being — we  must  offer  Him  the  sacrifice  of  our 
wills  and  give  Him  the  best  we  have.  And  our 
Lord  has  appointed  a  way  by  which  we  can  make 
the  most  acceptable  sacrifice  in  ordaining  the 
Holy  Eucharist,  in  which  we  not  only  receive  the 
Food  of  life  but  are  enabled  to  join  with  the 
heavenly  worship  “with  Angels  and  Archangels 
and  all  the  company  of  heaven,”  and  to  “present 
ourselves,  our  souls  and  bodies  a  living  sacrifice” 
acceptable  to  the  Father  because  they  are  united 
wTith  that  “one  full  perfect  and  sufficient  sacri¬ 
fice”  which  His  Son  made  on  Calvary  and  contin¬ 
ually  pleads  in  the  very  presence  of  the  Father. 
And  with  this  offering  of  ourselves,  our  souls 
and  bodies,  there  is  of  necessity  the  yielding  of 
ourselves  to  Him,  submitting  our  wills  to  His 
will,  and  we  shall  find  that  this  yielding  of  our 
wills  to  Him  is  not  a  hardship  but  on  the  con¬ 
trary  brings  us  perfect  freedom,  the  freedom  of 
the  King  who  is  not  bound  by  formal  law.  It  is 
as  the  Prayer  Book  collect  puts  it  “Whose  serv¬ 
ice  is  perfect  freedom,”  that  is,  “to  serve  God  is 
to  reign.” 


IV 

There  is  a  third  element  in  our  Lord’s  life 
which  we  must  not  forget  as  we  see  the  way  He 
unfolds  in  that  life  the  ideal  for  our  living. 
Faith  enables  us  to  see  and  know  God,  Love  leads 
us  to  worship  and  with  worship  to  serve.  So 


140  SOME  FOUNDATION  TRUTHS 


much  has  been  said  in  recent  years  about  service 
that  one  scarcely  needs  to  add  anything  and  yet 
after  all  what  is  service  but  the  expression  of 
our  Love  to  our  Lord  by  bringing  to  a  successful 
issue  His  own  work  among  men.  He  did  not 
finish  the  work.  That  which  He  alone  could  do 
He  did  do,  but  there  is  something  more,  some¬ 
thing  far  more  in  fact  and  that  He  left  us  to  do. 
Men  had  to  be  won.  Lie  would  draw  all  men  to 
Himself  but  the  medium  by  which  that  drawing 
is  to  be  accomplished  is  other  men.  He  wrought 
great  works  of  mercy  in  the  world,  but  when  He 
gave  the  Apostles  commission  He  told  them  they 
would  do  greater  things  than  He  had  done.  He 
cured  individuals  and  lifted  men  and  women, 
here  and  there,  crowds  no  doubt,  but  still  indi¬ 
viduals.  But  He  left  to  us  the  greater  task  of  pu¬ 
rifying  society  and  making  these  things  impos¬ 
sible.  And  this  is  a  sign  of  His  love  for  us  and 
the  opportunity  He  gives  us  of  showing  our  love 
for  Him  and  in  so  doing  quickens  in  us  the  third 
great  virtue,  Christian  Hope,  by  which  we  are  en¬ 
couraged  to  go  forward  in  spite  of  disappoint¬ 
ments. 

Christ’s  revelation  of  life  carries  us  a  step 
still  further.  Down  beneath  everything  in  His 
own  life  and  at  the  forefront  of  the  Sermon  on 
the  Mount  he  sets  Humility.  When  we  study 
our  Lord’s  life  we  get  some  idea  of  what  Humil¬ 
ity  really  is.  Bishop  Gore  in  his  lectures, 
“Christian  Moral  Principles,”  develops  the  idea 
on  the  basis  of  St.  Bernard’s  phrase  “Humility 


OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH  141 


is  the  truth  about  ourselves,”  making  it  the 
spirit  by  which  we  know  ourselves  as  we  are.  It 
was  this  which  characterized  our  Lord.  He 
knew,  none  better,  just  what  He  Himself  was 
both  in  relation  to  His  Father  and  to  us  men; 
and  no  false  modesty,  no  fictitious  valuations, 
for  one  moment  deceived  Him.  It  is  hard  for  us 
to  get  this  idea  clearly  in  regard  to  ourselves, 
but  after  all  it  is  really  essential,  if  we  are  to 
make  any  progress  in  our  life.  The  sense  of 
what  God  sees  in  us,  balanced  and  cheered  by 
what  God  wants  us  to  be  and  the  love  which 
bridges  the  gap  between;  the  certainty  of  what 
we  are  and  must  be  toward  our  fellows;  these 
truths  give  our  life  its  true  perspective  and  we 
can  hope  to  make  some  proper  progress  in  fol¬ 
lowing  the  way  the  Master  trod  and  reaching 
the  measure  of  the  stature  of  the  fulness  of 
Christ. 


v 

We  have  been  thinking  of  the  ideal  of  life 
which  Our  Lord  set  before  us  in  His  life  as  well 
as  His  teaching  as  that  to  which  we  are  to  seek 
to  attain ;  but  more  than  this  ideal  is  needed. 
There  must  be  a  motive.  Why  should  we  do 
this?  Let  me  suggest  just  two  sides  of  this  ques¬ 
tion  of  the  motive.  First  of  all  there  can  be  no 
happiness  save  in  the  way  He  points  out.  We 
are  familiar  with  the  Beatitudes  as  beginning 
with  the  word  “Blessed” ;  but  as  a  matter  of  ac- 


142  SOME  FOUNDATION  TRUTHS 


tual  fact  the  word  that  is  used  means  more  lit¬ 
erally  “happy”  or  “to  be  envied.”  What  Jesus 
Christ  set  forth  was  the  way  by  which  men  could 
attain  to  real  happiness.  And  beyond  this  ex¬ 
pectation  of  happiness,  something  which  all  peo¬ 
ple  desire  even  though  they  do  not  know  how  to 
attain  it,  there  is  the  second  motive,  the  higher 
one  of  which  I  have  already  spoken.  It  was  love 
that  sent  the  Eternal  Son  into  the  world  and  that 
made  Jesus  Christ  suffer  and  die;  and  love  be¬ 
gets  love.  To  be  the  beneficiaries  of  such  love  as 
God’s  and  not  to  respond  to  it  is  alas  not  un¬ 
thinkable  for  it  is  but  too  common;  but  it  does 
seem  incredible,  when  once  a  man  understands 
what  that  love  truly  is  and  has  done,  that  he 
should  reject  it.  The  highest  motive  for  the 
Christian  to  live  as  the  Master  taught  is  that 
only  so  can  he  respond  to  the  love  of  God  in 
Jesus  Christ  and  show  that  he  truly  loves  Him. 

VI 

The  fulfilling  of  the  Christian  life,  the  follow¬ 
ing  of  our  Lord’s  example  under  the  inspiration 
of  the  Holy  Spirit,  helped  by  the  Sacraments  was 
in  the  beginning  called  the  Way.  We  find  St. 
Luke  using  the  expression  frequently  in  the  early 
chapters  of  the  Acts.  It  points  out  that  there  is 
a  goal  which  is  not  here  but  yonder.  Along  the 
side  of  the  stone  on  Dean  Alford’s  grave  in  the 
Churchyard  of  St.  Martin’s  Church  in  Canter¬ 
bury  runs  in  Latin  this  sentence  “The  resting 


OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH  143 


place  of  a  traveller  journeying  heavenward.” 
These  words  show  a  true  comprehension  of  the 
faith  of  those  early  days.  Life  was  a  Way  and 
death  hut  the  ending  of  one  stage  and  the  mys¬ 
terious  entering  into  the  next  where  men  rest 
ere  they  go  onward.  Life  is  progress,  the  actual 
going  which  finally  brings  us  into  the  visible 
presence  of  God,  where  we  shall  see  Him  as  He 
is.  And  if  our  going  has  been  as  He  taught  us, 
along  the  strait  and  narrow  way  but  yet  the  Way 
that  leads  to  Him,  we  shall  not  only  see  Him  as 
He  is  but  we  shall  enter  into  that  wonderful  com¬ 
pany  in  which  we  shall  see  Jesus  our  Lord,  and 
the  Saints  of  God,  and  enter  into  the  fellowship 
never  to  be  broken,  with  those  whom  we  have 
“loved  long  since  and  lost  awhile,”  where  we 
shall  know  as  we  are  known  and  love  will  rule 
our  every  thought.  Such  a  life  will  be  no  nir¬ 
vana,  no  loss  of  personal  identity  which  would 
mean  the  power  to  love ;  but  that  absolute  satis¬ 
faction  of  which  St.  Augustine  felt  the  need  when 
he  said :  “My  soul  seeks  rest  and  finds  none  save 
in  Thee  O  God.” 

My  exposition  is  at  an  end.  I  have  tried  to 
develop  it  on  from  the  foundation  in  the  idea  of 
God  as  revealed  to  us  in  His  Son,  through  the 
truths  of  that  revelation  as  recorded  in  the  Creed, 
made  vital  in  the  Church  by  which  His  Kingdom 
is  established,  brought  to  the  individual  soul  in 
the  Sacraments  in  which  a  man  finds  power  to 
live  the  life  which  God  meant  him  to  live.  One 


144  SOME  FOUNDATION  TRUTHS 


brief  question  remains:  Who  is  sufficient  for 
these  things?  No  one?  save  as  we  can  say  with 
St.  Paul :  “I  can  do  all  things  through  Him 
who  strengtheneth  me.” 


